Talk:Gideon Sundback

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A Swedish immigrant to Canada, Sundback, an electrical engineer, was hired as a designer at the Universal Fastener Company. Because he was married to the daughter of the plant’s manager as well as being a talented designer, he was able to secure the position of head designer. One of the main components of this job was to find ways to improve the pre-existing Judson C-curity Fastener developed by Whitcomb L. Judson which had many flaws in its design. The original “Clasp-Locker” was developed when one of Judson’s friends with a sore back was having difficulties doing up his boots, so he developed a simpler hook-an-eye fastener that was easier to close than laces. With the death of his beloved wife in the year 1911, Sundback dedicated a larger amount of time to redeveloping the Judson C-curity Fastener and thus the zipper was born. His patent was filed in the year of 1917, describing the new zipper with features such as an increased number of teeth from four per inch to approximately 10 per square inch. It was easy to fasten as the two opposing sets of teeth were clasped together by a slider that could attach and detach the teeth with a simple up or down movement. In addition to this, Sundback also developed the machinery called the Scrapless (S-L) that was used to produce the zipper on a massive scale. The machine crafted the teeth of the zipper, and attached them onto long strips of fabric allowing a couple hundred feet of zipper to be manufactured on a daily basis. “Zipper was not the original name that the fastener was patented under. It was termed the “Separable Fastener” by Sundback. The actual name “Zipper” was not thought of by the inventor, but was rather coined by one of his first customers: The B.F. Goodrich company who used the fastener on a new pair of boots. The name Zipper was chosen because it was an easy to use and fast fastener to use as it could be easily used with one hand. The Zipper was originally only used on items such as boots and tobacco pouches. It was not until thirty years after this that the fashion industry finally decided to allow the Zipper to make its debut in the world of fashion clothing. When they did enter the clothing industry, it was in the form of the zippered fly on men’s trousers. The French designers who used it first claimed that it was a new sensation that would prevent “the possibility of unintentional and embarrassing disarray." Today, Zippers are used for a multitude of applications anywhere from luggage to the latest in clothing to footwear. The options for Zippers are truly limitless and this has never been as obvious as it is now with thousands of miles of zippers being manufactured daily that we are dependant upon this simple machine for completing the simplest daily tasks in our lives that we take for granted on a daily basis. Could you imagine life without the Zipper? Sorces: http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/zipper.asp http://inventors.about.com//library/weekly/aa082497.htm