Invention of Zip

The first person to attempt to reversibly connect two materials with a zip like mechanism was the American inventors Elias Howe (1819-1867) in 1851 with his “Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure”. However Howe devoted little time to his fastening invention. A short while later, fellow-American whit comb Judson invented the clasp locker, primary to help a friend who had a bad back and couldn't do up his shoes. The design was based around a hook-and-eye mechanism and had little commercial success. One of Judson’s employees. However, went on to hit the jackpot.

Gideon Sundback (1880-1954) worked for Judson’s universal Fastener company. Because of his great skill he was appointed as head designer. He had been tasked with improving the Judson hook-and-eye fastener, which had an unfortunate tendency to come apart. Sundback’s breakthrough design was based on the principle of interlocking teeth, and he called his invention the “Hookless Fastener“. It contains of two rows of facing teeth that were interlocked with a slider, and he received a patentin 1913. Further improvements to his design resulted in the “separable Fastener” in 1917. Sundback even developed a manufacturing machine for his new invention , which soon had the capacity to produce hundreds of feet of fastener every day.

One of his first major customers was B.F.Goodrich, who used the fastener in his new term “Zipper” for the device. Sundback’s fastener also found great utility in tobacco pouches. But it was only two decades later that it entered the fashion industry and become the everyday object in today.