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INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS
Gideon Sundback
ZIPPER

Elias Howe is recognized as the inventor of the sewing machine, but he also received a patent in 1851 for an “Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure.” However, because his sewing machine was very successful, Howe opted not to pursue his clothing closure invention. Forty‐four years, later Mr. Whitcomb Judson, who also invented a pneumatic street railway, marketed a “clasp locker,” a device that was similar to the 1851 Howe closure. The clasp locker was a complicated hook and eye shoe fastener. Universal Fastener Company was created by Judson to manufacture the new fastener that had its public debut at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. However, the Judson device met with limited commercial success, because it kept snapping open.

Gideon Sundback was born in Sweden, and, after his electrical engineering studies in Sweden, he moved to Germany, where he studied at the Polytechnic School in Bingen am Rhein. In 1903, he took his engineering exam, and, in 1905, he immigrated to the United States, where he was hired by Universal Fastener Company. He possessed excellent design skills, and, full disclosure, he was married to the plant manager’s daughter. Sundback eventually rose to the position of head designer at Universal Fastener.

Between 1906 and 1914, Sundback produced several improvements on the fasteners previously designed by Howe and Judson. Judson’s fastener was based on hooks and eyes, and Sundback eventually developed an improved version of that product, called the Plako. However, the Plako fastener had a tendency to pull apart, and was no more successful than previous fasteners. Sundback solved the pulling apart problem in 1913 when he invented the first fastener version not based on the hook and eye principle of previous fasteners. Known as “Hookless Fastener No. 1,” he increased the number of fastening elements used in previous fasteners from four per inch to 10–11 per inch. His invention also comprised two facing rows of teeth that were pulled into a single connected piece by a slider. Sundback also increased the opening for the teeth guided by the slider.

In 1914, Sundback developed “Hookless No. 2,” a version of his fastener based on interlocking teeth, which was the same as the modern metal zipper of today. In this fastener, each tooth was punched to have a recessed dimple on its bottom, and a nib or conical projection on its top. The nib on top of one tooth mated with the matching dimple in the bottom of the tooth that follows it on the other side as the two strips of teeth are brought together through the two Y‐channels of the slider. The teeth are ultimately crimped together tightly to form a strong fabric cord defining the selvage edge of the cloth tape that attaches the fastener length to the garment. The teeth on one side are offset by half a tooth’s height from those on the other side. The teeth are held tightly to the cord and tape so that, once meshed, there is insufficient play to allow the teeth to pull apart. A tooth cannot rise up enough on the nib below it to break free, and the top nib cannot become dislodged from the dimple in the tooth above it. Sundback’s U.S. Patent No. 1,219,881 for his Separable Fastener was issued in 1917.

Sundback also created a manufacturing machine for his new fastening device. The machine took a special Y‐shaped wire and cut scoops from the wire, then punched the scoop dimple and nib, and clamped each scoop on a cloth tape to produce a continuous fastener chain. Within the first year of operation, Sundback’s machine was producing several hundred feet, about 100 meters, of fastener per day.

During World War I, Sundback’s separable fasteners were reportedly used in U.S. Navy flight suit prototypes. However, the aviator garments apparently did not work well initially, but the flight suit prototypes created initial interest in these new fasteners in the garment industry.

In 1923, B.F. Goodrich Company developed the name “zipper,” and used the device on their new galoshes that were designed to be worn over dress shoes to keep the shoes dry in wet weather. The term “zipper” became short for “zipper up,” which is a manifestation of the “zzziiip” sound a zipper makes when it is being zipped up. At that time, boots, gloves, and tobacco pouches were the primary use for zippers. It took another 20 years before zippers were commercially noticed by the fashion industry. By World War II, the zipper had achieved wide acceptance for the flies of trousers and the plackets of skirts and dresses.

In the 1930s, a sales campaign began for children’s clothing featuring zippers, with the theme that young children would become self‐reliant by allowing them to dress themselves in self‐help clothing. In 1937, French fashion designers raved over the use of zippers in men’s trousers. Esquire magazine at one time stated that the zipper was the newest tailoring idea for men, and a virtue of zipper flies was that they would prevent “the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray.”

A boost for the zipper arrived when zippers could open on both ends, such as on jackets. Thousands of zipper miles are presently produced daily. You may see the letters “YKK” printed on some metal zipper pull‐up tabs. This stands for “Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha,” a Japanese manufacturer that produces approximately 50% of all zippers sold throughout the world.