August 3, 2022 • 37 mins
The development of the zipper was oddly arduous, with many fastener versions tried out before the zipper we know today and have on our clothes, handbags, and luggage was finally figured out.
Research:
- Friedel, Robert. “Zipper: an Exploration in Novelty.” W.W. Norton. 1994.
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "zipper". Encyclopedia Britannica, 21 Apr. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/art/zipper
- Johnson, Ian. “Zipper anniversary: 10 bits of trivia to impress the pants off you.” CBC News. April 29, 2013. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/zipper-anniversary-10-bits-of-trivia-to-impress-the-pants-off-you-1.1305202
- Lewis, Danny. “One Japanese Company Makes Half of the World’s Zippers.” Smithsonian. Sept 3, 2015. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-japanese-company-makes-half-worlds-zippers-180956482/
- “Gideon Sundback.” National Inventors Hall of Fame. https://www.invent.org/inductees/gideon-sundback
- Bauman, Richard. “The Ups and Downs of Success.” Fremont Tribune. Nov. 20, 2006. https://www.newspapers.com/image/550483507/?terms=whitcomb%20judson&match=1
- “Gideon Sundback celebrated in a Google doodle.” The Guardian. April 23, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/24/gideon-sundback-celebrated-google-doodle
- “Whitcomb Judson.” Lemelson MIT. https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/whitcomb-judson
- “Zipper’s Evolution Slow, Shaky.” Spokane Chronicle. March 16, 1978. https://www.newspapers.com/image/578438126/
- Altrowitz, Abe. “The Zipper was ‘Born’ and Raised Here.” The Minneapolis Star. June 12, 1973. https://www.newspapers.com/image/190250601/?terms=whitcomb%20judson&match=1
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh So. Historian
Robert Friedell wrote a book about zippers back in which
(00:22):
I recently read, and a line in the introduction to
that book really struck me, which was, while zippers are
used everywhere, they are almost never necessary. And I recoiled initially,
we need zippers everywhere, but really you could find an
alternate way to do almost everything that a zipper does.
But they're so convenient and handy that, of course they
(00:44):
have become ubiquitous throughout everyone's wardrobes. But without trying to
throw anyone under the bus. That quote, it's kind of
how I feel about most write ups about the invention
of the zipper, because it's one of those things I
of course so a lot. So I have done a
lot of thinking about zippers and how they work and
wonder where they came from. But if you look at
(01:05):
any right up, if you just you know, do an
Internet search and say who invented the zipper? You get
to maybe three paragraphs, and it's really really glossing over
a lot of stuff. Um, there's a lot of story here,
So I thought today might be a good time to
delve into the oddly arduous creation of this simple thing
(01:25):
that we almost all have on our clothes and our
handbags and our luggage, etcetera. Zippers. Now that I think
about it, they are in so many locations besides just
my jeans. Uh. In eighteen fifty one, Alias How, who
we talked about forever ago in Our Sewing Machine episode,
(01:47):
filed for a patent on an automatic continuous clothing closure.
If you look at the patent sketches, it really looks
like a zipper, but it's also a little misleading. His vice,
which he described as a series of clasps united by
a connecting cord, was really more like a spiral drawstring
(02:08):
that was pre laced through clasps on either side of
that opening that needed to be closed, So when you
pulled on the draw string, it pulled the two sides
together and closed it up. If you've ever seen a
spiral laced corset, it's kind of the same idea, but
on a smaller scale. You may recall that at one
point in his career, Elias How traveled to England to
(02:29):
make machines specifically intended for corset making. That was just
a few years before he filed this patent, so it's
possible that he was inspired by that connection. We don't
really know how didn't pursue the development of this though,
because he became too busy working on sewing machines. But
to really get into zippers in their origins, we have
(02:50):
to talk about a few other men, and the first
of those is Whitcomb L. Judson, who was born in Chicago, Illinois,
on Marche. We don't have a whole lot of details
about his personal life. We have virtually none about his youth.
We know that while he was still a teenager, he
enlisted with the Union Army and he was part of
(03:10):
the Illinois Infantry Regiment in the US Civil War. He
earned an undergraduate degree at Knox College, a liberal arts
college in Galsburg, Illinois, and his details from there are
pretty sparse until he appears in a Minneapolis, Minnesota directory
in eighteen eighty six. And in that directory, his profession
(03:30):
is simply listed as traveling agent i e. Like a
traveling salesman, with no indication as to who his employer was.
His story can be pieced together a bit through his
business relationship with another man, Harry Earl. In Earl started
his own company, Earl Manufacturing Company, and Whitcomb was an employee,
(03:51):
working initially as a salesman. Before founding that company, Harry
Earl had worked for Pitts Agricultural Works, so it's been
theorized that's where the two men met as employees. In
any case, once he was working for Harry Earle, Whitcomb
Judson started working not just on sales but on inventions,
and his first big effort in invention was in designing
(04:13):
a pneumatic street railway. He actually received a total of
fourteen patents related to the project over the course of
just a few years. But he didn't revolutionize urban to
suburban transportation as he had hoped because the system just
didn't really work that well, and by the time he
did start to really make progress on it, electric lines
(04:34):
had surpassed what he had hoped to do. But that
whole effort, including starting a company called Judson Pneumatic Street
Railway Company, gave him a lot of experience in the
ins and outs of trying to innovate in a technological space.
In Whitcomb Judson invented an item called a clasp blocker.
This was intended to be used in shoots, although Judson
(04:57):
was clear that it could be applied so many things
that needed closures, including mail bags and gloves. This was
essentially a set of hooks and eyes that had a
slider that moved the hooks into position to fasten them,
although exactly how this whole thing is supposed to have
worked as a little unclear. The description in the patent
mentions clasps which have quote underreaching and overlapping projections or
(05:22):
lips at their forward ends, which prevent the engagement or
disengagement of the hook portions of the clasps, except when
thrown upward, so that the parts stand at an angle
to each other of about ninety degrees. I can't really
visualize what that means. A little confusing even looking at diagrams,
(05:42):
I was like, would come what. It was listed in
Scientific American as one of the patents issued on August
twenty nine, and it was actually two patents because Judson
had refined his idea and submitted a second patent application
before the first one was granted, But the two patents
ended up being issued on the same day. We don't
(06:04):
know what sparked this idea or what inspired his design.
He had moved to Chicago at this time from New York,
where he and Earl had been working on the pneumatic
travel system. We also don't know why he moved. The
two men remained close friends and business associates. Though. Yeah,
they had seemed so all in on trying to connect
like the more populated parts of New York to more
(06:26):
rural parts with this travel thing, and then as I
think they realized it wasn't gonna happen, Whitcomb moved on. Uh.
He did take his fastener to the World's Fair in
Chicago that year to show it to the world. It
did not really get a lot of buzz there, but
Whitcomb Judson felt that there was potential for his fastener,
and in four he and Harry Earl founded the Universal
(06:49):
Fastener Company along with several investors. Just prior to the
company being officially founded, Judson filed two more patent applications
for his fastener, one for a more effective slider and
one for the fasteners on each side of the closure.
Prior to this, the teeth of the fastener were items
that were not permanently affixed to the item being closed.
(07:12):
They were individual pieces that slid kind of through the buttonholes.
But this new patent called for permanently attached clasps and
offered a number of ways that they might work to
fit together, including alternating from side to side as they
fit together with what Judson called pin piles and sockets.
This is starting to sound a lot more like a zipper.
(07:35):
In the first manufacture efforts of Universal Fastener Company were
made in a workshop owned by the Bride and Horseshoe Company.
The first working version and working goes in air quotes
because it apparently did not work, at least not consistently.
First working versions were made affixed to mailbags. If the
(07:56):
company could get a government contract, it could fund a
larger effort to move into the home consumer goods market.
The Postal Service did place an order for twenty bags
that had Dunson's closure. There were never any additional orders
placed after that, though. That's like the saddest trombone part
of this story for me. They had to have felt
(08:17):
so excited that they had a government order and then
it was like, no, no thanks, that's now these are
these are done so they're not really working for us.
As Universal Fastener struggled, Harry Earle struck a deal for
the company to be acquired by the Allyria Fastener Company
in Allria, Ohio. But Wickham Judson had reached a plateau
(08:39):
where his proclivities as an inventor couldn't keep up with
the knowledge that he needed to actually manufacture these designs,
and things went pretty badly. The entire Alliria company ended
up being liquidated in nineteen o one, and at that
point Harry Earle gained the rights to the Universal Fastener patents,
so Earle once again found investor and launched the Fastener
(09:01):
Manufacturing and Machine Company. This new iteration of their business venture,
which was based in New Jersey, aggressively advertised the merits
of Judson's closure invention, which they simply called the Fastener.
They advertised it in print and touted a wider variety
of uses than had even been suggested before. They said
(09:22):
this could go on everything from corsets to leggings, two shoes,
and boots. In nineteen o four, the company re orged
under the name Automatic Hook and Eye Company. This reflected
another change in the design of the fastener, which then
went by the new name of the Cecurity Fastener. That's
a sea dash c U r I t y spelling,
(09:44):
which is an awkward brand name in my opinion. At
this point, the advertising leaned into the women's clothing market,
and most of the print material focused on how much
easier it was going to be to fasten skirt plackets.
That seems like they were onto something, and they were,
But the fastener still needed some work, and we will
talk about its problems after we paused for a quick
(10:07):
sponsor break. While things were moving forward for Judson's invention,
there were still some pretty obvious problems. The security fasteners
sometimes jammed up. Also, so ASTs needed instructions on how
(10:30):
to stitch them into garments, and worst of all, in
my opinion, if you wanted to launder the garment, you
had to remove the fastener, wash it, and then reinstall
that fastener once the skirt or dress was clean, because
while they did have a coating, they were still prone
to rust. Additionally, these fasteners were expensive. They went to
(10:51):
market at thirty five cents at a time when a
basic skirt was about seventy seven cents. In the Sears
Robot catalog, dressmakers and resellers could get bulk discounts, but
even so, a closure for a garment costing one quarter
to one half of the value of the overall article
of clothing, it was just a lot like For comparison,
(11:11):
that would be like purchasing a pair of button fly
jeans today for eighty dollars and then having a company
tell you that you're already perfectly functioning garment would cost
another thirty dollars to modernize to a new closure. Most
people would skip that offer, and in the early nine
hundreds most people did just that. By nine six, Harry
(11:33):
Earle had left the company Whitcom. Judson soon extricated himself
from the business as well. These two men had been
trying to manufacture and market Judson's bastener for more than
a decade. At that point, with several restarts, it was
just not happening. Judson had also moved on creatively to
working on inventions related to the new technology of automobiles.
(11:55):
He was working on an early combustion engine and had
decided to move to miss Schigan to be near his son.
Skirt closures were just no longer holding his attention. The
automatic hook and eye company continued without the two men
who had catalyzed its founding, though, and that same year
that they left, a new figure entered the picture who
(12:15):
was key to the development of the zipper, and that
was Gideon Sundback Otto Friedrich. Gideon Sundback was born in
small On, Sweden on a Details about his early life
are a little sparse. We know he studied engineering at
bing In and received his degree in nineteen o three.
(12:36):
Once you finished schooling, he moved briefly to Germany before
deciding to head to the US. And he was in
a good position to do so. The family had money,
so moving to a new country wasn't really that much
of a gamble. Yeah. One of the books that I
read was like, sometimes you will see people acting like
this is you know, the classic like poor immigrant story
trying to find a new life, and it's like, No,
(12:58):
he was a wealthy kid who thought like, oh, I
can go make my fortune here in this other place.
Not quite the same. He arrived in North American nineteen
o five and headed for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was
employed as a tracer at Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
That job is exactly what it sounds like he was
tracing engineering drawings and schematics to make copies, but he
(13:21):
was soon promoted to a draftsman position, and he worked
in that role for about a year. Through various contacts,
someone mentioned sun Back to Frank Russell in nineteen o six.
At the time, Russell was the president of Automatic Hook
and Eye Company. The company executive had realized that what
they needed to make the security fastener really work in
(13:41):
a way that was reliable and affordable was an engineer,
and so Automatic recruited Sunback. Reading about this offer and move,
it seems almost like people who had looked at Sunback's
qualifications and his job at Westinghouse or left scratching their
heads about why they would take a position at this
flown during company in Hoboken with a fundamentally flawed product
(14:05):
background made that kind of a question mark decision. Uh
he did take the job, though possibly just for the challenge.
There's also been speculation that part of that decision for
the move was because he had met a young woman
named Elvira Aaronson on his first visit to Hoboken when
he toured the factory, and that he had been quite
taken with her. And those two did eventually marry, and
(14:27):
we know that because her father was involved in Automatic
as an executive. Elvira Aaronson was around the company a lot.
She actually worked in the factory and she sometimes modeled
garments that the company's closures were sewn into. And these
two started seeing each other almost immediately after. Sundback moved
to New Jersey, and he had Elvira, who he called Vira,
(14:49):
help him perfect his English, which was by all accounts
already quite good. There's some people that were like, you
don't actually need English lessons. So if he had been
drawn to the job because of the potential to spend
time with her, that absolutely worked out. But the reasoning
for his move from Westinghouse is still speculation. We really
don't know if he moved to be with her or not.
(15:10):
The timing of his hire meant that Sunback was joining
Automatic hook and Eye just as Harry Earl and Whitcomb
Judson were leaving. There was a brief period of overlap.
Gideon later described Whitcomb as a man who invented something
every night, but soon he was gone and Sunback settled
in to try to understand Judson's invention and where it
(15:31):
was going wrong, and he quickly identified a few issues. One,
when a woman was wearing a skirt with a security
closure on it, the fastener would often pop open if
she moved in a way that applied any tension across it.
He realized that if just one of the interlocking pieces
was moved askew through pretty much more normal motion of
(15:53):
the wearer, the whole thing would come undone. So obviously
not good at all. It does the work getting Him's
first pass at a solution was something he called a
placo fastener. This was more flexible, so that a person
could bend or twist in a normal day to day
way without popping the whole thing apart. This one's a
(16:15):
market in nineteen o eight. But the more flexible eyes
that sun Back had designed were also bulkier. They could
be rendered entirely useless forever if any fabric got caught
in them, and then from a production standpoint, they were
expensive in part because once a placao had come off
the production line, workers had to open and close it
repeatedly to primeate. So like wear down any ridges that
(16:38):
would cause it to stick. It's not very efficient process. No,
that's a lot of man hours just to get one
function enclosure out the door. Still, they marketed the heck
out of that Placau fastener, and one of the big
points in the sales pitch was that at last, a
lady could fasten her garments at the back of the
waist securely with no help, but they needed help sewing
(17:02):
them into clothes. It seemed that everyone had trouble with
that step. Complaints became so frequent that the company started
offering customers the option to send their garments in with
their Placo fastener, which would then be stitched in at
the factory and then sent back to that customer ready
to wear. That seems like a huge money pit. Now
(17:24):
we need a sewing division to fix all these problems.
The ongoing issues once again led to financial problems for
American Hook and I, and Sunback found himself not only
negotiating with creditors on behalf the company, but also expanding
their product line and taking side projects just to keep
cash coming in. Things became bad enough that the company
(17:46):
could not afford to pay Sunback and instead gave him
all the patent rights to the various fasteners that the
company had. This is another thing that leaves a lot
of people going why was this man who had an
engineering degree and could have gone almost anywhere he wanted
so invested in this company that he would literally take
side jobs and be like, yeah, I'll do this engineering
(18:09):
as a freelance contractor for you so that I can
give that money to my boss. Like it's a little weird.
But by nineteen o nine, sunback, it turned out, probably
because of that, was really running the company and he
did briefly manage to turn around the money situation there.
He also sought to expand the company into international markets.
(18:31):
He and his at this point father in law, Peter Aaronson,
made a move to sell their fasteners in France as
Lafirm toute American or American Clothes all but that effort
had sputtered out by nine twelve. In the time that
the French sales efforts were happening, Gideon, who had married
Elvira Errandson in nineteen o nine, welcomed a child. This
(18:52):
was a daughter named Ruth Margitte. But though they should
have been joyous, this was not a happy occasion. Elvira
die not long after Ruth's birth, and Gideon was just devastated,
so much so that he could not envision himself raising
a child. When Elvira died that aaronsons were in Europe
and Gideon had no personal support system and hobookens, so
(19:16):
Ruth was sent to Sweden, where Sunback's mother took care
of her throughout her childhood. Yeah, there's not a lot
of information on their relationship. It appears they did not
really reunite until she was at least a teenager, and
then he was left kind of explaining like, no, I
was grieving not a lot beyond that of what happened
with them. Yeah, I read a thing recently about like
(19:39):
how common this has been in points in history, especially
when like a mother dies with an infant and the
father is totally at a loss for what to do,
like particularly in this era, and so a different person
entirely would wind up raising the child. Yeah. I suspect
had Elvira's parents still ben in New Jersey and not
(20:02):
working overseas, that would have Benna a means to keep
the family a little closer together, but it just wasn't.
But by the time of Elvira's death and Ruth's birth,
wickcom Judson had also died. He had moved as planned
to Muskegan, Michigan, and he died there on December seven,
nine nine, at the age of sixty three, so he
never got to see the success that eventually came from
(20:24):
other inventors building on his idea. His work in the
early automotive industry, however, became very profitable, and that ensured
that his son, who carried on his father's work in
that field, became very very wealthy. In the years that
Sunback had been with American Hook and I, other inventors
had gotten the idea that they could improve on Judson's
design and patent their own slide fastener. A woman named
(20:48):
Ida Josephine Calhoun had come up with a design that
was very similar to Judson's, but had a slider that
separated into two parts to help with some of the
jamning problems. Frank camp Field had come up with a
slide fastener that eliminated hooks and eyes and instead used
a ball in socket closure. Yeah. Those were both interesting
didn't ever go to market. But the first version of
(21:10):
the closure that came closest to Sundbacks, and which led
to some legal issues down the road, was one designed
by a woman from Zurich, Switzerland named Katerina kun Moose.
She developed her fastener with a partner named en Reforster.
Kun Moose and Forrester got patents for their design in
Great Britain, France, and Germany. But though the European developed
(21:33):
closure worked and was pretty darn close to what we'd
easily recognized as a zipper today, it never went into
production and those patents were abandoned. We'll talk about the
breakthrough that led to the modern zipper after we paused
for a quick word from the sponsors that keep the
show going. While still leaving his wife, Sundback worked on
(22:02):
a new idea which involved small interlocking teeth and was
very much what we would recognize as a zipper. This
change in design direction had been catalyzed by a deep
frustration that he had experienced with trying to make the
security fastener and its various problems actually work. He wrote
of this shift quote, I was fed up with hooks
(22:24):
and eyes, rusting metal and everything pertaining to the fastener,
the complaints, as far as our salesmen were concerned. We're
here's a scratchy fastener. These hooks are awfully rough and rusted.
I decided to turn in an entirely different direction and
away from hooks and eyes and get away from the
metallic appearance, make something attractive to the wearer, and starting
(22:45):
in nineteen twelve he started to do a lot more
experimenting with the design. In October of that year he
applied for a new patent, and this version used a
completely different approach. One side had a row of clamp
and the other side had a raised cord, so when
the slider moved up, it closed the clamps onto the cord,
(23:07):
and the slider moved down, it opened the clamps and
the cord edge was released. This worked a lot better
than any of the previous designs that Judson or sun
Back had worked on. It was consistent, it was quiet,
it sure looked a lot nicer than the security fastener,
and it was flexible, with no tendency to pop open
when a wearer moved around. Sun Back called it the
(23:29):
hookless fastener. Not super catchy, but it also conveyed that
a main concern about previous fasteners was out of the picture.
There was, however, a problem, or more accurately too one.
The factory was back in financial hot water. It had
to shut down completely temporarily because operational funds for it
(23:49):
just did not exist, and sun Back took advantage of
the down time to test and refined the hookless fastener
that actually revealed the second problem. The cording side of
it wore out way too fast for it to be
a reliable closure. The cotton used in the courting that
which was just what was available at the time, just
could not stand up to the opening and closing of
(24:12):
the clamps. Ultimately, this version of the fastener never went
into production, but it did reinvigorate sent Back and other
executives that American Hook and I, so much so that
plans were set in motion to move the factory and
re establish the company as the hookless Fastener Company. And
the decision was made to move to Meadville, Pennsylvania, in
(24:33):
part just to give everybody a fresh start. When Louis Walker,
a company executive who was a significant driving force behind
the business aspects of the various fasteners we've talked about
and their development, when he was asked by journalists why
the company had chosen to start anew in Meadville, he
gave an interesting answer. He mentioned the good community and
(24:53):
the good schools and the clean air and water and
quote minimum of labor troubles. By autumn nine, the first
fasteners were rolling off the production line in Meadville, but
they were not the new hookless models. They were the
old Placo fasteners the company had made in New Jersey.
The new design just wasn't ready because of the where
(25:14):
problem Sunback had identified, but they had to sell something,
so the company fell back to the old design. The
new fastener had been kept under wraps, so nobody outside
of a small circle in the company was any the
wiser of this. Yeah, and even then, it took a
long time for send Back apparently to own up to
the fact that, like that, that courted fastener was not
gonna last. But it didn't take long for him to
(25:37):
make the necessary adjustments to his design that led to
a successful product, so successful that it introduced a closure
into the world that remains largely unchanged in design. While
Sundback claimed that he lost sleep as he thought about
endless possible solutions, we don't actually know how he landed
at the version of his fastener that would launch an
(25:59):
entire industry. But the important element here was the introduction
of what we would call zipper teeth. Today, zipper teeth,
which are often called scoops on the manufacturing side, have
a little bump on one side and a little divot
on the other. When you stack these teeth in an
alternating pattern, so one tooth bump lands in the divot
of a tooth on the opposite side, and you have
(26:20):
a lot of them together, you get a surprisingly sturdy closure.
This is all described in detail and send Back's patent,
which he filed in August of nineteen fourteen. Why he
waited until then is unknown. He had the design figured
out at the end of nineteen thirteen, but because sent
Back didn't really document his process, there has always loomed
(26:41):
one question about his fastener breakthrough. Did he know about
the one Katerina coon Moose had designed and patented in
Europe in nineteen eleven, because the scoop and bump were
present in her non produced design. This was enough of
a concern that, even though that Coon, Moose and Forster
design was not patented in the US, the U S
(27:04):
Patent Office, who kept abreast of information on patents around
the world, wanted to talk to sun Back about his
patent application for what he called a separable fastener because
they wanted to make sure he had not copied that
European patent. The big distinction was that the design by
kud Moose had featured round bumps and scoops. Sunbacks had
(27:27):
rectangular divots and bumps. He had determined that round would
allow too much movement of the teeth. They would swivel
and pop apart, so he came up with a shape
to prevent that swiveling motion. So once the teeth were
stacked together, they flexed as a unit, but not at
each touch point. And this discussion of this difference with
(27:47):
the patent office was something that continued on for several years.
Gideon Sunback and Hookless Fastener Company actually made their case
regarding the different shaping of the connector points repeatedly. They
even had versions made in their factory that strictly followed
the Coon Moose design, just so they could show that
it was very clear that it would not work properly. Simultaneously,
(28:11):
as sent Back in his company defended their patent application,
other very similar patent applications were filed in the United States,
further prolonging the process. Ultimately, the Sundback design was granted
a patent, but it took several years and an awful
lot of legal back and forth. That patent was finally
issued in March of nineteen seventeen, so almost three years
(28:33):
after he filed for the Canadian rights, Sundback patented the
hookless fastener under his own name, not the companies that
had been agreed to with the company, and he also
established the Lightning Fastener Company in Canada to manufacture separable
fasteners there. The first large scale use of sun Backs
invention was in the military. World War One. Uniforms and
(28:55):
pack gear made use of the new fastener, but although
it saved time and was reliable, it took a long
time to catch on with the general population. Zippers were
still struggling to be recognized for their utility value. That
ease with which they enabled a person to get dressed
or undressed led to a bit of panic about the
moral decline they might catalyze. They found a use as
(29:20):
a closure for tobacco pouches when locktights started buying bulk
for the pouches they made, but the garment market was
still pretty elusive. But a consumer garment market usage of
the separable fastener catapulted Sundbacks Fastener forward in the nineteen twenties.
You might have noticed that we have not discussed the
origin of the word zipper and when it started to
(29:42):
be used, but it is tied to this nineteen twenties product.
Sundback did not come up with the word. It was
coined by the BF good Rich company because in three
be of good Rich started using the hookless fastener in galoshes,
and the story goes that an employee there came up
with on a mono poetic name, which the company registered
(30:02):
as a trademark. In there are some variations to that
who actually decided they should call it a zipper, but
it's generally agreed that an employee of B. F. Good
Rich was the one that came up with it. Lightning
Fastener Company challenged the good Rich trademark in nineteen thirty one.
That case ended up being dismissed, but good Rich was
eventually granted exclusive use of the name zipper boots, not
(30:27):
the word zipper on its own. As the nineteen thirties
war on the zipper finally started to lose its negative
connotations as high profile people started to embrace this new closure.
Advertising started touting zippers as a helpful closure for children's
clothing because it made them more able to manage getting
dressed on their own. The Prince of Wales started opting
(30:49):
for zippers instead of buttons and his trousers and four,
further improving the image of the zipper. Elsa Schipperelli, who
we talked about in our virtual live show, was one
of the first fashion designers to start using zippers, and
by the late nineteen thirties and France most designers were
using them. And as France goes, so goes the world
(31:10):
when it comes to fashion. UH. It was Lightning Fastener
Company in St. Catherine's, Ontario that first went all in
on producing Sunback separable fastener in ninety seven. And when
we say all in, what we mean is that it
built the first factory that it was exclusively intended to
manufacture zippers. Prior to that, it had always been like
we're working it into another space. UH. Sundback also designed
(31:33):
the machinery that was used for zipper production at that plant.
By the time World War Two was over, the zipper
was ubiquitous. Through a series of name changes and acquisitions,
the company Sundback worked for had evolved into Talent, which
continues to exist today. By the end of the nineteen fifties,
Talent was turning out five hundred million zippers a year.
(31:54):
Levi's first garment to incorporate zippers was a pair of
overalls that they sold in nineteen fifty four. That was
also the year that Gideon Sunbac died of a heart condition.
He had remained in Meadville, Pennsylvania for the rest of
his life, although he frequently visited Canada and the factory
in St. Catharine's Sundback lived long enough to see the
beginning of his inventions widespread acceptance, although he may never
(32:18):
have dreamed of the way that it would become so
completely ingreened in everyday life that people rarely even give
it much thought. He was buried in Meadville's Greendale Cemetery.
And because we know you're probably wondering if you've ever
looked at a zipper pull and seeing the letters y
K K and wondered what they mean, here's the scoop.
(32:39):
It is an abbreviation for Yoshida Kodyo, Kibushi Ki Kaisha.
That's one of the companies that dominates the market today.
So why k K or Yoshida Company Limited was founded
in ninety four by Tadao Yoshida. Today, it dominates the
zipper market. It makes more than one point five billion
zippers each year that's billion with a B in more
(33:00):
than seventy countries around the globe. Yoshida Company Limited achieved
its success in the zipper market by carefully designing every
aspect not just to their product, but of their supply chain.
Everything from smelting brass to creating the boxes that the
product is shipped in is done under the company's umbrella
Zippers Zippers. Tracy, I'm still working through the pile yeah
(33:27):
stuff stuff for our our various listener mail and I, um,
like I said, I am now hitting things that are
very old, but uh, some of them are very charming.
So I wanted to talk about in this case too,
that are from our same listener who has sent us
many cards and notes over the years, and that is
our listener Chip. But Chip at Halloween and uh, you'll
(33:51):
forgive me. I honestly am not sure which Halloween this was,
if this one, but sent us in a May saying
Haunted mansion pop up Halloween card cool, which is like
dreamy That's great, Um, very very much in my Raby
Zone uh and Chipwrights, Deer, Holly and Tracy. Happy October
(34:14):
and happy Halloween. Pandemic or no pandemic. My Halloween spirits
are high, and I know yours are to. Your episodes
about people of the Spiritualist movement are my favorite. So
I loved your Madame Blovotsky episode. I too love a
good seance. Rumor has it that she knew or at
least met past episode subject, the Count of Saint Germain.
True or not? The idea that the Count is connected
(34:35):
to yet another episode subject is a hoot. As for
this Haunted Mansion pop up card, as soon as I
saw it, I knew it was a perfect card for
the two of you. I hoped you're able to enjoy
the changing of the leaves, cider, spooky stories, and everything
else about this time of year that brings a smile
to your faces. And in case no one has actually
said it, thank you for staying on the air despite
the challenges of the times we are in. Stay safe
(34:56):
and have a very happy Halloween. I will say this,
I enjoy all those things you around. It's always Halloween
time for me. As we record this, it's the middle
of July, which means I am ramping up my Halloween
rabies for thee because it is my very favorite. And
then I also have another card from CHIP that's a
Thanksgiving card, and he wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy, congratulations
(35:19):
we've made it this far. I know you probably won't
get this for a while because you weren't in the
office due to the pandemic, and I could send an
email instead, but I just love taking the time to
send something tangible. Somehow, your episodes have only gotten more
exciting and interesting during the pandemic. Your Halloween episodes are
a highlight of my October, and your Helen von Tassig
and Vivian Thomas, where every bit is captivating. I'm a
(35:41):
registered nurse and have worked in cardiac care units for
ten years around the country. I've had many a patient
who were born with congenital cardiac conditions, and your episodes
on the Pioneers of Infant Cardiac Surgery touched me greatly.
And this is a Thanksgiving cards, so it's kind of
a double We're getting some bookends of CHIP cards, but
I wanted to make sure we read that since it
talked at an episode you did the primary research on
(36:03):
and also I want to say thank you to Chip
for working in medicine because it's hard and nurses are
miracles in my book. Um, and also more, Halloween is
coming very soon and very excited if you would like
to write to us. As Chip mentioned, we're not in
the office and our office is moving, so don't send
(36:24):
us anything physical because I don't even know if the
new office can handle it. We're getting into a much
smaller space, so I'm thinking we might have to cut
off those. As much as I love getting treats from people, Yeah,
it will probably never arrive if you send us something
and I don't even have an address for it. Yeah.
We've had a couple of people asked recently like, hey,
(36:44):
I can't find your address, and we are literally in
between spaces right now, like Holly and I aren't really
working in the office at all, but like the the
office has moved out of the old space. New space
is not ready for us yet, so there's not an
address at this moment. It we don't exist in physical space. Uh,
so yes, just keep that in mind. Uh, if you
(37:05):
had intention to send us something, you might want to
direct that energy elsewhere because I don't want it to
go to waste, but you can email us at History
podcast at i heeart radio dot com. You can also
find us on social media as missed in History And
if you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, now
it's a great time to do so. You could do
that on the iHeart radio app or wherever it is
(37:26):
that you're listening to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh So. Historian
Robert Friedell wrote a book about zippers back in which
(00:22):
I recently read, and a line in the introduction to
that book really struck me, which was, while zippers are
used everywhere, they are almost never necessary. And I recoiled initially,
we need zippers everywhere, but really you could find an
alternate way to do almost everything that a zipper does.
But they're so convenient and handy that, of course they
(00:44):
have become ubiquitous throughout everyone's wardrobes. But without trying to
throw anyone under the bus. That quote, it's kind of
how I feel about most write ups about the invention
of the zipper, because it's one of those things I
of course so a lot. So I have done a
lot of thinking about zippers and how they work and
wonder where they came from. But if you look at
(01:05):
any right up, if you just you know, do an
Internet search and say who invented the zipper? You get
to maybe three paragraphs, and it's really really glossing over
a lot of stuff. Um, there's a lot of story here,
So I thought today might be a good time to
delve into the oddly arduous creation of this simple thing
(01:25):
that we almost all have on our clothes and our
handbags and our luggage, etcetera. Zippers. Now that I think
about it, they are in so many locations besides just
my jeans. Uh. In eighteen fifty one, Alias How, who
we talked about forever ago in Our Sewing Machine episode,
(01:47):
filed for a patent on an automatic continuous clothing closure.
If you look at the patent sketches, it really looks
like a zipper, but it's also a little misleading. His vice,
which he described as a series of clasps united by
a connecting cord, was really more like a spiral drawstring
(02:08):
that was pre laced through clasps on either side of
that opening that needed to be closed, So when you
pulled on the draw string, it pulled the two sides
together and closed it up. If you've ever seen a
spiral laced corset, it's kind of the same idea, but
on a smaller scale. You may recall that at one
point in his career, Elias How traveled to England to
(02:29):
make machines specifically intended for corset making. That was just
a few years before he filed this patent, so it's
possible that he was inspired by that connection. We don't
really know how didn't pursue the development of this though,
because he became too busy working on sewing machines. But
to really get into zippers in their origins, we have
(02:50):
to talk about a few other men, and the first
of those is Whitcomb L. Judson, who was born in Chicago, Illinois,
on Marche. We don't have a whole lot of details
about his personal life. We have virtually none about his youth.
We know that while he was still a teenager, he
enlisted with the Union Army and he was part of
(03:10):
the Illinois Infantry Regiment in the US Civil War. He
earned an undergraduate degree at Knox College, a liberal arts
college in Galsburg, Illinois, and his details from there are
pretty sparse until he appears in a Minneapolis, Minnesota directory
in eighteen eighty six. And in that directory, his profession
(03:30):
is simply listed as traveling agent i e. Like a
traveling salesman, with no indication as to who his employer was.
His story can be pieced together a bit through his
business relationship with another man, Harry Earl. In Earl started
his own company, Earl Manufacturing Company, and Whitcomb was an employee,
(03:51):
working initially as a salesman. Before founding that company, Harry
Earl had worked for Pitts Agricultural Works, so it's been
theorized that's where the two men met as employees. In
any case, once he was working for Harry Earle, Whitcomb
Judson started working not just on sales but on inventions,
and his first big effort in invention was in designing
(04:13):
a pneumatic street railway. He actually received a total of
fourteen patents related to the project over the course of
just a few years. But he didn't revolutionize urban to
suburban transportation as he had hoped because the system just
didn't really work that well, and by the time he
did start to really make progress on it, electric lines
(04:34):
had surpassed what he had hoped to do. But that
whole effort, including starting a company called Judson Pneumatic Street
Railway Company, gave him a lot of experience in the
ins and outs of trying to innovate in a technological space.
In Whitcomb Judson invented an item called a clasp blocker.
This was intended to be used in shoots, although Judson
(04:57):
was clear that it could be applied so many things
that needed closures, including mail bags and gloves. This was
essentially a set of hooks and eyes that had a
slider that moved the hooks into position to fasten them,
although exactly how this whole thing is supposed to have
worked as a little unclear. The description in the patent
mentions clasps which have quote underreaching and overlapping projections or
(05:22):
lips at their forward ends, which prevent the engagement or
disengagement of the hook portions of the clasps, except when
thrown upward, so that the parts stand at an angle
to each other of about ninety degrees. I can't really
visualize what that means. A little confusing even looking at diagrams,
(05:42):
I was like, would come what. It was listed in
Scientific American as one of the patents issued on August
twenty nine, and it was actually two patents because Judson
had refined his idea and submitted a second patent application
before the first one was granted, But the two patents
ended up being issued on the same day. We don't
(06:04):
know what sparked this idea or what inspired his design.
He had moved to Chicago at this time from New York,
where he and Earl had been working on the pneumatic
travel system. We also don't know why he moved. The
two men remained close friends and business associates. Though. Yeah,
they had seemed so all in on trying to connect
like the more populated parts of New York to more
(06:26):
rural parts with this travel thing, and then as I
think they realized it wasn't gonna happen, Whitcomb moved on. Uh.
He did take his fastener to the World's Fair in
Chicago that year to show it to the world. It
did not really get a lot of buzz there, but
Whitcomb Judson felt that there was potential for his fastener,
and in four he and Harry Earl founded the Universal
(06:49):
Fastener Company along with several investors. Just prior to the
company being officially founded, Judson filed two more patent applications
for his fastener, one for a more effective slider and
one for the fasteners on each side of the closure.
Prior to this, the teeth of the fastener were items
that were not permanently affixed to the item being closed.
(07:12):
They were individual pieces that slid kind of through the buttonholes.
But this new patent called for permanently attached clasps and
offered a number of ways that they might work to
fit together, including alternating from side to side as they
fit together with what Judson called pin piles and sockets.
This is starting to sound a lot more like a zipper.
(07:35):
In the first manufacture efforts of Universal Fastener Company were
made in a workshop owned by the Bride and Horseshoe Company.
The first working version and working goes in air quotes
because it apparently did not work, at least not consistently.
First working versions were made affixed to mailbags. If the
(07:56):
company could get a government contract, it could fund a
larger effort to move into the home consumer goods market.
The Postal Service did place an order for twenty bags
that had Dunson's closure. There were never any additional orders
placed after that, though. That's like the saddest trombone part
of this story for me. They had to have felt
(08:17):
so excited that they had a government order and then
it was like, no, no thanks, that's now these are
these are done so they're not really working for us.
As Universal Fastener struggled, Harry Earle struck a deal for
the company to be acquired by the Allyria Fastener Company
in Allria, Ohio. But Wickham Judson had reached a plateau
(08:39):
where his proclivities as an inventor couldn't keep up with
the knowledge that he needed to actually manufacture these designs,
and things went pretty badly. The entire Alliria company ended
up being liquidated in nineteen o one, and at that
point Harry Earle gained the rights to the Universal Fastener patents,
so Earle once again found investor and launched the Fastener
(09:01):
Manufacturing and Machine Company. This new iteration of their business venture,
which was based in New Jersey, aggressively advertised the merits
of Judson's closure invention, which they simply called the Fastener.
They advertised it in print and touted a wider variety
of uses than had even been suggested before. They said
(09:22):
this could go on everything from corsets to leggings, two shoes,
and boots. In nineteen o four, the company re orged
under the name Automatic Hook and Eye Company. This reflected
another change in the design of the fastener, which then
went by the new name of the Cecurity Fastener. That's
a sea dash c U r I t y spelling,
(09:44):
which is an awkward brand name in my opinion. At
this point, the advertising leaned into the women's clothing market,
and most of the print material focused on how much
easier it was going to be to fasten skirt plackets.
That seems like they were onto something, and they were,
But the fastener still needed some work, and we will
talk about its problems after we paused for a quick
(10:07):
sponsor break. While things were moving forward for Judson's invention,
there were still some pretty obvious problems. The security fasteners
sometimes jammed up. Also, so ASTs needed instructions on how
(10:30):
to stitch them into garments, and worst of all, in
my opinion, if you wanted to launder the garment, you
had to remove the fastener, wash it, and then reinstall
that fastener once the skirt or dress was clean, because
while they did have a coating, they were still prone
to rust. Additionally, these fasteners were expensive. They went to
(10:51):
market at thirty five cents at a time when a
basic skirt was about seventy seven cents. In the Sears
Robot catalog, dressmakers and resellers could get bulk discounts, but
even so, a closure for a garment costing one quarter
to one half of the value of the overall article
of clothing, it was just a lot like For comparison,
(11:11):
that would be like purchasing a pair of button fly
jeans today for eighty dollars and then having a company
tell you that you're already perfectly functioning garment would cost
another thirty dollars to modernize to a new closure. Most
people would skip that offer, and in the early nine
hundreds most people did just that. By nine six, Harry
(11:33):
Earle had left the company Whitcom. Judson soon extricated himself
from the business as well. These two men had been
trying to manufacture and market Judson's bastener for more than
a decade. At that point, with several restarts, it was
just not happening. Judson had also moved on creatively to
working on inventions related to the new technology of automobiles.
(11:55):
He was working on an early combustion engine and had
decided to move to miss Schigan to be near his son.
Skirt closures were just no longer holding his attention. The
automatic hook and eye company continued without the two men
who had catalyzed its founding, though, and that same year
that they left, a new figure entered the picture who
(12:15):
was key to the development of the zipper, and that
was Gideon Sundback Otto Friedrich. Gideon Sundback was born in
small On, Sweden on a Details about his early life
are a little sparse. We know he studied engineering at
bing In and received his degree in nineteen o three.
(12:36):
Once you finished schooling, he moved briefly to Germany before
deciding to head to the US. And he was in
a good position to do so. The family had money,
so moving to a new country wasn't really that much
of a gamble. Yeah. One of the books that I
read was like, sometimes you will see people acting like
this is you know, the classic like poor immigrant story
trying to find a new life, and it's like, No,
(12:58):
he was a wealthy kid who thought like, oh, I
can go make my fortune here in this other place.
Not quite the same. He arrived in North American nineteen
o five and headed for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was
employed as a tracer at Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company.
That job is exactly what it sounds like he was
tracing engineering drawings and schematics to make copies, but he
(13:21):
was soon promoted to a draftsman position, and he worked
in that role for about a year. Through various contacts,
someone mentioned sun Back to Frank Russell in nineteen o six.
At the time, Russell was the president of Automatic Hook
and Eye Company. The company executive had realized that what
they needed to make the security fastener really work in
(13:41):
a way that was reliable and affordable was an engineer,
and so Automatic recruited Sunback. Reading about this offer and move,
it seems almost like people who had looked at Sunback's
qualifications and his job at Westinghouse or left scratching their
heads about why they would take a position at this
flown during company in Hoboken with a fundamentally flawed product
(14:05):
background made that kind of a question mark decision. Uh
he did take the job, though possibly just for the challenge.
There's also been speculation that part of that decision for
the move was because he had met a young woman
named Elvira Aaronson on his first visit to Hoboken when
he toured the factory, and that he had been quite
taken with her. And those two did eventually marry, and
(14:27):
we know that because her father was involved in Automatic
as an executive. Elvira Aaronson was around the company a lot.
She actually worked in the factory and she sometimes modeled
garments that the company's closures were sewn into. And these
two started seeing each other almost immediately after. Sundback moved
to New Jersey, and he had Elvira, who he called Vira,
(14:49):
help him perfect his English, which was by all accounts
already quite good. There's some people that were like, you
don't actually need English lessons. So if he had been
drawn to the job because of the potential to spend
time with her, that absolutely worked out. But the reasoning
for his move from Westinghouse is still speculation. We really
don't know if he moved to be with her or not.
(15:10):
The timing of his hire meant that Sunback was joining
Automatic hook and Eye just as Harry Earl and Whitcomb
Judson were leaving. There was a brief period of overlap.
Gideon later described Whitcomb as a man who invented something
every night, but soon he was gone and Sunback settled
in to try to understand Judson's invention and where it
(15:31):
was going wrong, and he quickly identified a few issues. One,
when a woman was wearing a skirt with a security
closure on it, the fastener would often pop open if
she moved in a way that applied any tension across it.
He realized that if just one of the interlocking pieces
was moved askew through pretty much more normal motion of
(15:53):
the wearer, the whole thing would come undone. So obviously
not good at all. It does the work getting Him's
first pass at a solution was something he called a
placo fastener. This was more flexible, so that a person
could bend or twist in a normal day to day
way without popping the whole thing apart. This one's a
(16:15):
market in nineteen o eight. But the more flexible eyes
that sun Back had designed were also bulkier. They could
be rendered entirely useless forever if any fabric got caught
in them, and then from a production standpoint, they were
expensive in part because once a placao had come off
the production line, workers had to open and close it
repeatedly to primeate. So like wear down any ridges that
(16:38):
would cause it to stick. It's not very efficient process. No,
that's a lot of man hours just to get one
function enclosure out the door. Still, they marketed the heck
out of that Placau fastener, and one of the big
points in the sales pitch was that at last, a
lady could fasten her garments at the back of the
waist securely with no help, but they needed help sewing
(17:02):
them into clothes. It seemed that everyone had trouble with
that step. Complaints became so frequent that the company started
offering customers the option to send their garments in with
their Placo fastener, which would then be stitched in at
the factory and then sent back to that customer ready
to wear. That seems like a huge money pit. Now
(17:24):
we need a sewing division to fix all these problems.
The ongoing issues once again led to financial problems for
American Hook and I, and Sunback found himself not only
negotiating with creditors on behalf the company, but also expanding
their product line and taking side projects just to keep
cash coming in. Things became bad enough that the company
(17:46):
could not afford to pay Sunback and instead gave him
all the patent rights to the various fasteners that the
company had. This is another thing that leaves a lot
of people going why was this man who had an
engineering degree and could have gone almost anywhere he wanted
so invested in this company that he would literally take
side jobs and be like, yeah, I'll do this engineering
(18:09):
as a freelance contractor for you so that I can
give that money to my boss. Like it's a little weird.
But by nineteen o nine, sunback, it turned out, probably
because of that, was really running the company and he
did briefly manage to turn around the money situation there.
He also sought to expand the company into international markets.
(18:31):
He and his at this point father in law, Peter Aaronson,
made a move to sell their fasteners in France as
Lafirm toute American or American Clothes all but that effort
had sputtered out by nine twelve. In the time that
the French sales efforts were happening, Gideon, who had married
Elvira Errandson in nineteen o nine, welcomed a child. This
(18:52):
was a daughter named Ruth Margitte. But though they should
have been joyous, this was not a happy occasion. Elvira
die not long after Ruth's birth, and Gideon was just devastated,
so much so that he could not envision himself raising
a child. When Elvira died that aaronsons were in Europe
and Gideon had no personal support system and hobookens, so
(19:16):
Ruth was sent to Sweden, where Sunback's mother took care
of her throughout her childhood. Yeah, there's not a lot
of information on their relationship. It appears they did not
really reunite until she was at least a teenager, and
then he was left kind of explaining like, no, I
was grieving not a lot beyond that of what happened
with them. Yeah, I read a thing recently about like
(19:39):
how common this has been in points in history, especially
when like a mother dies with an infant and the
father is totally at a loss for what to do,
like particularly in this era, and so a different person
entirely would wind up raising the child. Yeah. I suspect
had Elvira's parents still ben in New Jersey and not
(20:02):
working overseas, that would have Benna a means to keep
the family a little closer together, but it just wasn't.
But by the time of Elvira's death and Ruth's birth,
wickcom Judson had also died. He had moved as planned
to Muskegan, Michigan, and he died there on December seven,
nine nine, at the age of sixty three, so he
never got to see the success that eventually came from
(20:24):
other inventors building on his idea. His work in the
early automotive industry, however, became very profitable, and that ensured
that his son, who carried on his father's work in
that field, became very very wealthy. In the years that
Sunback had been with American Hook and I, other inventors
had gotten the idea that they could improve on Judson's
design and patent their own slide fastener. A woman named
(20:48):
Ida Josephine Calhoun had come up with a design that
was very similar to Judson's, but had a slider that
separated into two parts to help with some of the
jamning problems. Frank camp Field had come up with a
slide fastener that eliminated hooks and eyes and instead used
a ball in socket closure. Yeah. Those were both interesting
didn't ever go to market. But the first version of
(21:10):
the closure that came closest to Sundbacks, and which led
to some legal issues down the road, was one designed
by a woman from Zurich, Switzerland named Katerina kun Moose.
She developed her fastener with a partner named en Reforster.
Kun Moose and Forrester got patents for their design in
Great Britain, France, and Germany. But though the European developed
(21:33):
closure worked and was pretty darn close to what we'd
easily recognized as a zipper today, it never went into
production and those patents were abandoned. We'll talk about the
breakthrough that led to the modern zipper after we paused
for a quick word from the sponsors that keep the
show going. While still leaving his wife, Sundback worked on
(22:02):
a new idea which involved small interlocking teeth and was
very much what we would recognize as a zipper. This
change in design direction had been catalyzed by a deep
frustration that he had experienced with trying to make the
security fastener and its various problems actually work. He wrote
of this shift quote, I was fed up with hooks
(22:24):
and eyes, rusting metal and everything pertaining to the fastener,
the complaints, as far as our salesmen were concerned. We're
here's a scratchy fastener. These hooks are awfully rough and rusted.
I decided to turn in an entirely different direction and
away from hooks and eyes and get away from the
metallic appearance, make something attractive to the wearer, and starting
(22:45):
in nineteen twelve he started to do a lot more
experimenting with the design. In October of that year he
applied for a new patent, and this version used a
completely different approach. One side had a row of clamp
and the other side had a raised cord, so when
the slider moved up, it closed the clamps onto the cord,
(23:07):
and the slider moved down, it opened the clamps and
the cord edge was released. This worked a lot better
than any of the previous designs that Judson or sun
Back had worked on. It was consistent, it was quiet,
it sure looked a lot nicer than the security fastener,
and it was flexible, with no tendency to pop open
when a wearer moved around. Sun Back called it the
(23:29):
hookless fastener. Not super catchy, but it also conveyed that
a main concern about previous fasteners was out of the picture.
There was, however, a problem, or more accurately too one.
The factory was back in financial hot water. It had
to shut down completely temporarily because operational funds for it
(23:49):
just did not exist, and sun Back took advantage of
the down time to test and refined the hookless fastener
that actually revealed the second problem. The cording side of
it wore out way too fast for it to be
a reliable closure. The cotton used in the courting that
which was just what was available at the time, just
could not stand up to the opening and closing of
(24:12):
the clamps. Ultimately, this version of the fastener never went
into production, but it did reinvigorate sent Back and other
executives that American Hook and I, so much so that
plans were set in motion to move the factory and
re establish the company as the hookless Fastener Company. And
the decision was made to move to Meadville, Pennsylvania, in
(24:33):
part just to give everybody a fresh start. When Louis Walker,
a company executive who was a significant driving force behind
the business aspects of the various fasteners we've talked about
and their development, when he was asked by journalists why
the company had chosen to start anew in Meadville, he
gave an interesting answer. He mentioned the good community and
(24:53):
the good schools and the clean air and water and
quote minimum of labor troubles. By autumn nine, the first
fasteners were rolling off the production line in Meadville, but
they were not the new hookless models. They were the
old Placo fasteners the company had made in New Jersey.
The new design just wasn't ready because of the where
(25:14):
problem Sunback had identified, but they had to sell something,
so the company fell back to the old design. The
new fastener had been kept under wraps, so nobody outside
of a small circle in the company was any the
wiser of this. Yeah, and even then, it took a
long time for send Back apparently to own up to
the fact that, like that, that courted fastener was not
gonna last. But it didn't take long for him to
(25:37):
make the necessary adjustments to his design that led to
a successful product, so successful that it introduced a closure
into the world that remains largely unchanged in design. While
Sundback claimed that he lost sleep as he thought about
endless possible solutions, we don't actually know how he landed
at the version of his fastener that would launch an
(25:59):
entire industry. But the important element here was the introduction
of what we would call zipper teeth. Today, zipper teeth,
which are often called scoops on the manufacturing side, have
a little bump on one side and a little divot
on the other. When you stack these teeth in an
alternating pattern, so one tooth bump lands in the divot
of a tooth on the opposite side, and you have
(26:20):
a lot of them together, you get a surprisingly sturdy closure.
This is all described in detail and send Back's patent,
which he filed in August of nineteen fourteen. Why he
waited until then is unknown. He had the design figured
out at the end of nineteen thirteen, but because sent
Back didn't really document his process, there has always loomed
(26:41):
one question about his fastener breakthrough. Did he know about
the one Katerina coon Moose had designed and patented in
Europe in nineteen eleven, because the scoop and bump were
present in her non produced design. This was enough of
a concern that, even though that Coon, Moose and Forster
design was not patented in the US, the U S
(27:04):
Patent Office, who kept abreast of information on patents around
the world, wanted to talk to sun Back about his
patent application for what he called a separable fastener because
they wanted to make sure he had not copied that
European patent. The big distinction was that the design by
kud Moose had featured round bumps and scoops. Sunbacks had
(27:27):
rectangular divots and bumps. He had determined that round would
allow too much movement of the teeth. They would swivel
and pop apart, so he came up with a shape
to prevent that swiveling motion. So once the teeth were
stacked together, they flexed as a unit, but not at
each touch point. And this discussion of this difference with
(27:47):
the patent office was something that continued on for several years.
Gideon Sunback and Hookless Fastener Company actually made their case
regarding the different shaping of the connector points repeatedly. They
even had versions made in their factory that strictly followed
the Coon Moose design, just so they could show that
it was very clear that it would not work properly. Simultaneously,
(28:11):
as sent Back in his company defended their patent application,
other very similar patent applications were filed in the United States,
further prolonging the process. Ultimately, the Sundback design was granted
a patent, but it took several years and an awful
lot of legal back and forth. That patent was finally
issued in March of nineteen seventeen, so almost three years
(28:33):
after he filed for the Canadian rights, Sundback patented the
hookless fastener under his own name, not the companies that
had been agreed to with the company, and he also
established the Lightning Fastener Company in Canada to manufacture separable
fasteners there. The first large scale use of sun Backs
invention was in the military. World War One. Uniforms and
(28:55):
pack gear made use of the new fastener, but although
it saved time and was reliable, it took a long
time to catch on with the general population. Zippers were
still struggling to be recognized for their utility value. That
ease with which they enabled a person to get dressed
or undressed led to a bit of panic about the
moral decline they might catalyze. They found a use as
(29:20):
a closure for tobacco pouches when locktights started buying bulk
for the pouches they made, but the garment market was
still pretty elusive. But a consumer garment market usage of
the separable fastener catapulted Sundbacks Fastener forward in the nineteen twenties.
You might have noticed that we have not discussed the
origin of the word zipper and when it started to
(29:42):
be used, but it is tied to this nineteen twenties product.
Sundback did not come up with the word. It was
coined by the BF good Rich company because in three
be of good Rich started using the hookless fastener in galoshes,
and the story goes that an employee there came up
with on a mono poetic name, which the company registered
(30:02):
as a trademark. In there are some variations to that
who actually decided they should call it a zipper, but
it's generally agreed that an employee of B. F. Good
Rich was the one that came up with it. Lightning
Fastener Company challenged the good Rich trademark in nineteen thirty one.
That case ended up being dismissed, but good Rich was
eventually granted exclusive use of the name zipper boots, not
(30:27):
the word zipper on its own. As the nineteen thirties
war on the zipper finally started to lose its negative
connotations as high profile people started to embrace this new closure.
Advertising started touting zippers as a helpful closure for children's
clothing because it made them more able to manage getting
dressed on their own. The Prince of Wales started opting
(30:49):
for zippers instead of buttons and his trousers and four,
further improving the image of the zipper. Elsa Schipperelli, who
we talked about in our virtual live show, was one
of the first fashion designers to start using zippers, and
by the late nineteen thirties and France most designers were
using them. And as France goes, so goes the world
(31:10):
when it comes to fashion. UH. It was Lightning Fastener
Company in St. Catherine's, Ontario that first went all in
on producing Sunback separable fastener in ninety seven. And when
we say all in, what we mean is that it
built the first factory that it was exclusively intended to
manufacture zippers. Prior to that, it had always been like
we're working it into another space. UH. Sundback also designed
(31:33):
the machinery that was used for zipper production at that plant.
By the time World War Two was over, the zipper
was ubiquitous. Through a series of name changes and acquisitions,
the company Sundback worked for had evolved into Talent, which
continues to exist today. By the end of the nineteen fifties,
Talent was turning out five hundred million zippers a year.
(31:54):
Levi's first garment to incorporate zippers was a pair of
overalls that they sold in nineteen fifty four. That was
also the year that Gideon Sunbac died of a heart condition.
He had remained in Meadville, Pennsylvania for the rest of
his life, although he frequently visited Canada and the factory
in St. Catharine's Sundback lived long enough to see the
beginning of his inventions widespread acceptance, although he may never
(32:18):
have dreamed of the way that it would become so
completely ingreened in everyday life that people rarely even give
it much thought. He was buried in Meadville's Greendale Cemetery.
And because we know you're probably wondering if you've ever
looked at a zipper pull and seeing the letters y
K K and wondered what they mean, here's the scoop.
(32:39):
It is an abbreviation for Yoshida Kodyo, Kibushi Ki Kaisha.
That's one of the companies that dominates the market today.
So why k K or Yoshida Company Limited was founded
in ninety four by Tadao Yoshida. Today, it dominates the
zipper market. It makes more than one point five billion
zippers each year that's billion with a B in more
(33:00):
than seventy countries around the globe. Yoshida Company Limited achieved
its success in the zipper market by carefully designing every
aspect not just to their product, but of their supply chain.
Everything from smelting brass to creating the boxes that the
product is shipped in is done under the company's umbrella
Zippers Zippers. Tracy, I'm still working through the pile yeah
(33:27):
stuff stuff for our our various listener mail and I, um,
like I said, I am now hitting things that are
very old, but uh, some of them are very charming.
So I wanted to talk about in this case too,
that are from our same listener who has sent us
many cards and notes over the years, and that is
our listener Chip. But Chip at Halloween and uh, you'll
(33:51):
forgive me. I honestly am not sure which Halloween this was,
if this one, but sent us in a May saying
Haunted mansion pop up Halloween card cool, which is like
dreamy That's great, Um, very very much in my Raby
Zone uh and Chipwrights, Deer, Holly and Tracy. Happy October
(34:14):
and happy Halloween. Pandemic or no pandemic. My Halloween spirits
are high, and I know yours are to. Your episodes
about people of the Spiritualist movement are my favorite. So
I loved your Madame Blovotsky episode. I too love a
good seance. Rumor has it that she knew or at
least met past episode subject, the Count of Saint Germain.
True or not? The idea that the Count is connected
(34:35):
to yet another episode subject is a hoot. As for
this Haunted Mansion pop up card, as soon as I
saw it, I knew it was a perfect card for
the two of you. I hoped you're able to enjoy
the changing of the leaves, cider, spooky stories, and everything
else about this time of year that brings a smile
to your faces. And in case no one has actually
said it, thank you for staying on the air despite
the challenges of the times we are in. Stay safe
(34:56):
and have a very happy Halloween. I will say this,
I enjoy all those things you around. It's always Halloween
time for me. As we record this, it's the middle
of July, which means I am ramping up my Halloween
rabies for thee because it is my very favorite. And
then I also have another card from CHIP that's a
Thanksgiving card, and he wrote, Dear Holly and Tracy, congratulations
(35:19):
we've made it this far. I know you probably won't
get this for a while because you weren't in the
office due to the pandemic, and I could send an
email instead, but I just love taking the time to
send something tangible. Somehow, your episodes have only gotten more
exciting and interesting during the pandemic. Your Halloween episodes are
a highlight of my October, and your Helen von Tassig
and Vivian Thomas, where every bit is captivating. I'm a
(35:41):
registered nurse and have worked in cardiac care units for
ten years around the country. I've had many a patient
who were born with congenital cardiac conditions, and your episodes
on the Pioneers of Infant Cardiac Surgery touched me greatly.
And this is a Thanksgiving cards, so it's kind of
a double We're getting some bookends of CHIP cards, but
I wanted to make sure we read that since it
talked at an episode you did the primary research on
(36:03):
and also I want to say thank you to Chip
for working in medicine because it's hard and nurses are
miracles in my book. Um, and also more, Halloween is
coming very soon and very excited if you would like
to write to us. As Chip mentioned, we're not in
the office and our office is moving, so don't send
(36:24):
us anything physical because I don't even know if the
new office can handle it. We're getting into a much
smaller space, so I'm thinking we might have to cut
off those. As much as I love getting treats from people, Yeah,
it will probably never arrive if you send us something
and I don't even have an address for it. Yeah.
We've had a couple of people asked recently like, hey,
(36:44):
I can't find your address, and we are literally in
between spaces right now, like Holly and I aren't really
working in the office at all, but like the the
office has moved out of the old space. New space
is not ready for us yet, so there's not an
address at this moment. It we don't exist in physical space. Uh,
so yes, just keep that in mind. Uh, if you
(37:05):
had intention to send us something, you might want to
direct that energy elsewhere because I don't want it to
go to waste, but you can email us at History
podcast at i heeart radio dot com. You can also
find us on social media as missed in History And
if you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, now
it's a great time to do so. You could do
that on the iHeart radio app or wherever it is
(37:26):
that you're listening to your favorite podcasts. Stuff you Missed
in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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