The Zipper

 

The Zipper

Probably one of the best-known inventions of the 19th century was the “Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure” by Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine. It was patented by him in 1851. Never heard of it? Not surprising, it was never marketed under that name. Around 1895 American Whitcomb Judson, who already had a dozen patents to his name, marketed a slightly different device called the “Clasp Locker Device.” Judson and a partner, Lewis Walker, used the new invention on their boots and, in 1893 took it to the Chicago World’s Fair. The two did not have much success with their invention.

 

Fifteen years later, in 1918, a Swedish born Canadian engineer named Gideon Sunbäck modified the invention, making it smaller, lighter, and more reliable. He manufactured the product at his Universal Fastener Company in St. Catharines, Ontario. Unfortunately Sunbäck also lacked imagination when it came to naming his product and it became “The Hookless Fastener.” More in spite of its new name than because of it, the new and improved fastener started to sell. It was eventually sold to the US Army for use on the clothing and equipment of WW1 US army soldiers. Oddly enough, this easiest to use of all devices was supplied with an instruction manual.

 

By 1919 a company called Kynoch from the British industrial heartland of Birmingham, England, began making “The Ready Fastener” in 1919. The turning point however, came in 1924 when, at the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley, England, Italian born Madame Schiaparelli, a Paris fashion designer, used the product in her designs. She was the first to use synthetic fabrics and zipper fastenings and the first to open a boutique offering ready-to-wear clothing. Anecdotal history has it that Mr. B.F. Goodrich of the B.F. Goodrich Company coined the term “zipper” while marketing the fasteners on his galoshes, because of the sound it made when the fastener slid its way along the parallel metal tracks. However, Benjamin Franklin Goodrich died in 1888 and this is therefore mostly likely untrue, although the B F Goodrich Company may have come up with the term.

 

The world’s largest maker of “Zip Fasteners” is now YKK, a Japanese Industrial Corporation.

 

©2009 Anthony Gussin