May 7, 2020 • 54 mins
The zipper may be the most unsung invention we humans have ever come up with. Prior to zippers, everyone walked around like idiots with nothing but buttons to hold their clothes together. The zipper changed all that. The zipper changed everything.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the
podcast everybody. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck trans
Drip Drip Drip Bryant over there. Jerry's somewhere out in
the ether, floating along in an alternate dimension of chaos
(00:25):
and disorder. Uh. And this is stuff you should know,
that's right? Uh. Inventor series, well, sure, inventors in this case,
lots of inventors. Um. First, I want to say check.
I gotta fully prepare the studio, the little house studio.
Here there we go. So I've just sprayed a couple
(00:49):
of sprits is of Mama Brand Grapefruit tangerine aromatherapy room spray,
and I'm feeling energized and ready to go. Oh good,
that's very nice. That is some stuff, man. I need
some of that in my basement. Oh you should have
loads of it? I should? I do? I just don't
have it down here? Where where could somebody find it
(01:09):
if they weren't me already know where to find it?
I wish you gotta love your Mama dot com and
support small businesses that sell soap. When you need soap.
Very nice, Chuck, very nice, and yes, I can attest.
This is some fine room spray. And you're washing your
hands a lot, so get some motion because you're probably dry.
I'm just using the room spray as everything. Oh yeah, yeah, lotion, soap,
(01:32):
what else you know? Essential oil? Stuff like that lip bomb,
all all the good things to make you slippery. So,
speaking of slippery, Chuck, you know something that's not really
slippery when you use it correctly, a zipper. It's been
a while, as far as the segway goes, so give
(01:54):
me a break. It's been a while. Yeah, I I oh, oh,
you just reminded me of something. Hold on, hold on,
I'm very sorry. I gotta do this. I'm so glad
you reminded me. Though. So you sang that song somehow
it reminded me of breakfast at Tiffany's. That song that
duo is friends with our buddy Toby hal Brooks. Toby
(02:18):
hal Brooks and his lovely wife and Nell just had
their first baby. Oh Toby had a baby. Yes, So
congratulations to Toby and and Nell. They have a cute
little baby too. I've seen a picture of her and
she is adorable. So congrats guys, and way to go.
That's amazing. I'm very happy for them. Toby is a
great guy. And I don't know if I met his wife,
(02:40):
have I It don't know. I don't think I have.
Maybe it's south by Southwest. Maybe that was a long
time ago. It was a while back. Yeah, I remember
eating a drinking and eating Bloody Mary's with bacon and cheese,
and that was one of those places that had it
all in the glass. Yeah, it was nice at the
(03:02):
Drexel Hotel. Right, Yeah, that was a good day or
driscal dri driscyll all of that from It's been a while.
So let's talk about buttons and then zippers. Okay, So
I um thought that this was a pretty cool intro
if you ask me, because if you think about zippers,
you think zippers they're great. Who needs to think much
(03:23):
about them? Well, you do, pal, because you are blessed
to be living in an age where zippers exist. Because
it was not too long ago, um about a hundred years,
a little over a hundred years that there weren't zippers.
You had a button basically, maybe some clasps, nothing that
you were going to be happy dealing with. And most
(03:45):
of the time. For most of human history, it was
a button that was our only option to to to
connect two pieces of fabric and hold it in place,
which is more important than you would think. Chuck, the
dumb clumsy button has been around. I think the earliest
button that we found comes from a settlement settlement in
the Indus Valley civilization which is now modern day Pakistan.
(04:09):
Uh And it was a curbed shell. It's about five
thousand years old. And buttons back then, this was sort
of even pre buttonhole they were they were loops. Um.
If you've ever had one of those cool old school
uh well, some pea coats have the have the loops,
some don't. But I'm kind of thinking of the the
loop and bone thing that some of these kind of
(04:32):
corduroy coats have had. Or like if you were a
cape and probably you've probably encountered something like this. Yeah,
my cape definitely has a loop and bone. One of
my capes, say Pakistan, but like Sammy Davis Jr. Pakished
on babe, very nice, very nice. So um, the button
(04:53):
from what I understand though, from this, you know, five
thousand years ago up to a little less than a
thousand years ago. For the most part, it was just
basically for showing off, you know, like, yeah, you could
use it to clasp a couple of pieces of material together, whatever.
But for the most part it was an adornment. It
was like jewelry. And it wasn't until I think the
thirteenth century that buttons started to be taken seriously for
(05:17):
the first time, where you had the first button makers
guild formed in France in twelve fifty. That was a
big watershed moment in the history of buttons. Yeah, the French.
They basically everyone was like, guys, we've had buttons for
a long time. I think it's about time we start
taking these things seriously. Yeah, this is it's been amateur,
our bush league stuff up to this point. Let's let's
(05:37):
get serious about buttons. And they did. So they really
stopped and thought, well, we can make this better. Forget
that loop that you put things through, and you know,
the button can just fall right right back through. What
if we make a hole in the actual fabric that
we're trying to connect itself, so some edges around it
and make what we'll eventually call a button hole. How
(05:58):
about that? And this act really as simple as that
is just made clothing technology jump by light years. Yeah,
that was a big deal because, uh, those loops can
break off, and often do, but sometimes they just dissolve
in the sun. Yeah, those buttonholes did. They don't break
I guess if you were really hard on them, they
(06:19):
could eventually split to the seam. But there were a
lot better than those loops. And you know, buttons they
were the thing. They were around for a long time.
They were just sort of the way that you've fastened
two pieces of clothing together. But at some point someone
was like, there's got to be a better way. Like
every great invention, not every great imation, but many great
(06:41):
inventions were built on someone trying to do something in
a better way. Yeah, because I mean even when the
buttons working on all four cylinders, which is as many
as it has, there's still some real flaws in it,
and that the fabric that you're pulling together and holding
together with the uton might be held at the button point,
(07:02):
but above and below that button there's a big old hole,
and who knows what's sticking out of there, you know
what I'm saying. I'm sure buttons can also pop off.
There's some problems with it, and with those flaws like
you're saying. Some people said, there's got to be a
better way, and as a progression of people started to
kind of vibe on the same idea, separately from what
(07:23):
I understand. And the first of the bunch was a
guy named Elias how Jr. Who in eighteen fifty one
got himself a patent for a automatic continuous clothing closure.
That's right, was what he called it. Not exactly catchy. Yeah.
So his idea was, you you saw some reinforcements to
a couple of edges of material that you want to
(07:46):
you know, join together in wedded union, and you connect
them with all these, uh class a series of clasps,
but they are connected by a cord running or sliding
as he says in the pattern up on ribs. Not
the best invention, and it didn't work that great because
(08:07):
they were clasps like this was the pred the predecessor
of the zipper, to be sure it was. He was
not on it like later inventors would be. No, but
the idea of pulling on like a pull and moving
like a mechanism across you know, two pieces of fabric,
(08:27):
enjoining it together in its wake. That is the clearly
the foundation of zippers, Like this guy clearly laid the
foundation and probably would be considered the father of the zipper.
But he left everything just sitting there in his patent.
He never pursued it, and um, most people think that
the reason he didn't pursue it because he had bigger
(08:47):
fish to fry in the form of the modern sewing machine.
He was also the inventor of the sewing machine, and
he's like, I'm feel a little more bullish about the
sewing machine than than the zipper. To use um clap
seeing economy type terms. That's right. So the father of
the zipperh is a man or generally known as this
man from Chicago named Whitcomb Judson. This is about forty
(09:13):
four years after Howe's had. How had filed his patent
and he marketed and sold, which meant, you know, he
kind of owned it then as a clasp blocker or
unlocker for shoes, which, um, it was interesting that he
was that narrow in his design. I think, I don't
(09:35):
know if it was at the time. I think now
you try and go as broad as you can with patents,
But back then he was like, this thing works great
for shoes, uh, and shoes are kind of a pain
to put on, so that was what we're going to
use them for. Yeah, I mean, he was like, this
is a real problem because again, we have buttons mostly
for shoes, and you know, because shoes were fairly form fitting,
(10:00):
you needed a lot of buttons per inch in a
row to really hold these two pieces of fabric together,
one flap over another. So these buttons were small and
they were sewn close together, so close in fact, that
they invented another um UH invention called the button button hook,
and it was like a little handheld harpoon, a mini
(10:21):
harpoon with the hook on the end, and you would
push it through the button hole and pull the button
out with it, and you do this like eight ten
thousand times per shoe. And that was how you put
shoes on. So, I mean, I'm sure people just put
shoes on once when they were grown adult and just
didn't take them off until they were buried, you know.
(10:41):
So he was trying to solve the solution with a
poll that you could just kind of do the same
thing with. And he he really took Alia's house, and
again I'm not sure if it was because he was
familiar with the patent or not um, but he he
took that and basically said, this is this is worth pursuing,
this is this is important stuff here. Yeah. So, like
(11:04):
many great inventors, he got together with a business person,
a man named Colonel Lewis Walker, because a lot of
times inventors like to toil away in the shop and
tinker with things, and they need like a real business
brain to kind of run the show. Why is it
always a colonel though, Why not like a major or general?
Is it always a colonel? Yeah, Colonel Tom Parker, Colonel Sanders,
(11:27):
Colonel Sanders, Colonel Bruce Springsteen, colonel colonel Colonel So he
got together with Walker, Colonel Walker, and launched the Universal
Fastener Company to manufacture and sell the Judson Security Fastener.
(11:47):
Very clever there the letter c dash Curity Fastener. Uh
And like so many huge products, were debuted at the
Chicago World's Fair and was a huge hit it except
that it wasn't No, And I have to say, admittedly
it took me at least twice to realize it wasn't
cocurret e. Really, yeah, it wasn't the first time. But
(12:12):
so in that World's Fair, Um. They when they debuted it,
this is have you ever read Devil in the White
City before it? Man, you're really gonna like it, Chuck.
But anyway, it was that world's fair. God the Guide
us such a great job of describing that that world's fair,
and like the importance of it. As far as I know,
(12:34):
he doesn't mention zippers, but he may because he did
some pretty good research obviously. But the whole thing was
a flop for a couple of reasons. They were really
unreliable at the time, and they were really expensive, and
when you looked really closely at them, they still weren't
what you'd recognize as zippers. They had little class, but
it was a little class hook combo. And when you
(12:56):
dragged this this mechanism up, the clasps were pulled toward
one another and hooked. When you pulled it down they
would be unhooked. You also could just do the whole
thing by hand, but again it was still like this
clearly the foundation for zippers, but it wasn't quite right. Um.
Luckily whitcome Judson didn't give up. Instead, he hired a
(13:19):
guy named Gideon son Back who basically came in and
is in my opinion, the true father of the Zipper, right,
I think that seems like a natural breakpoint. I thought,
so to tease it there with Gideon son to back,
and we will come right back and talk about son
to Back right after this. I want to learn about
(13:53):
astortic college, how to take a perfect but all about
fractalkiscon un the Lizzie Border murders and the guy I've
all runs on the plane every day that we should know.
Ward up, Jerry, there was a hundred and ten percent
chance that this is going to be a little sillier
than average. What the zipper episode? Mhmm, all right, because
(14:17):
they're so silly, they are so before we broke. I
don't know if you remember you called Gideon son Back
the true father of the zipper? Uh? He did I
say that? I don't know, but he is the father
of the zipper because he made what we all recognize
as a zipper. He was Swedish born and he was
(14:37):
an electrical engineer, which is kind of interesting. You would
think mechanical, but I guess you just knew how to
tinker with things. He was a bit of a show
off apparently. Oh yeah, well, I mean he was an
electrical engineer who who was the father of the zipper?
Come on, oh, I got you. You know he was
a glory hog, Colonel Bruce Prings. He was hired to
(14:59):
work for that Universal Fastener company and he married the
plant manager's daughter, one Elvira Aaronson. It's a great name, which, um,
he was talented, so I'm not saying he got it
sherely because of nepotism, but he did get a position
as a head designer at that company, and he was like,
(15:20):
this security fastener is okay, but it really ain't all that.
His wife very sadly passed on in nineteen eleven, and
that really just gave him the time to pour himself
into a project. A couple of years later, December of
about a being bought a boom. You've got the zipper. Yeah. Um.
(15:40):
He created the hookless number one and the hookless number two,
And he said in an interview later that like the
key was getting rid of those hooks, terrible books, the hooks.
Everyone was so sick of these stupid hooks. But when
he came up with the hookless number one and the
hookless number two, and the hookless number two is what
you would say there's your modern zipper right there. It
was such a big deal that UM the company changed
(16:04):
its name from Universal Fastener to Hookless Fastener Company. So
that's I mean, that's pretty big. Like you know, you've
kind of made it as the head designer if you
design a product, and they changed the company name because
of it. And in this patent that Sunback got um
it basically it improved on that security fastener in a
(16:26):
number of ways. Rather than I think four clasps per inch,
he well, he changed the clasps to teeth. Was big
first steps. And then rather than four clasps per inch,
he added um at least ten or eleven teeth per inch.
So the more teeth or the more points of contact
(16:46):
where the fabrics joining together, the stronger that bond is
going to be. Um He He also created something UM
a machine to produce it with. And that's I think
where his electrical engineering stuff came in. Yeah, the scrapless
machine took this y shaped wire, cut these little scoops out,
and then punch that scoop dimple and little nib and
(17:09):
then clamped each one of those on a cloth tape.
And all these words sound weird when you're just saying
them like that. He invented the zipper. He did think
of the zipper, looked down at your zipper, and that's
what he did. That's what all those words mean. Yeah. Uh.
And again, like the stuff he was working with the
foundation wasn't like it wasn't a hop, skip and a jump.
(17:31):
This guy like really he really contributed to the world basically. Yeah,
and the world caught on. He was making a few
hundred feet of these a day initially, and the US
Army said, hey, these are great because here's what we've
got going on. We don't have pockets on our sailors pants.
(17:53):
I don't know why, and so they need to keep
stuff in there. So we give everybody these little Fannie packs. Basically,
these are money belts, and they're always losing their money,
these sailors, so we gotta have these zippers. We need
twenty four thousand of these to keep the sailor money
inside their Fannie packs. Yeah. I think they just assumed
that from that point on, anytime they went into port,
(18:15):
they would come back with all of their money. It
still didn't work, but it was clear they hadn't lost
it along the way. They just spent it. All. Yeah,
so twenty four thousand that year. Uh, in nineteen eighteen
they ordered ten thousand for pilot flight suits, which makes sense.
I gotta have those things. Yeah, sealed up and uh,
(18:37):
it still wasn't called a zipper at this point though.
That was the B. F. Good Rich company who actually
used his fastener sunbacks on these galoshes that they put
out in NT the notice that made a little zip sound,
and so they called these boots zippers. It wasn't actually
the zipper. They called the boots the zippers. Isn't that
fascinating the first the first use of the word zipper
(19:00):
described boots, not the zippers on the boots. Pretty cool.
I love it, and be of good Rich. I think
they still make at least souls for shoes too. Oh yeah, yeah.
Imagine going to the store and buying a pair of
BEF good Rich galoshes. You know those things are gonna last,
I would think. So you're wearing tires right right, you
(19:21):
can only buy them at the tire store, the most
boring place on earth. Oh yeah, with the worst coffee
and the worst magazines. Unless you're into monster trucking or
bass fishing, right then you're in Hong Heaven. So for
the first little bit, that's what the zipper was used for.
They were used for boots, they were using the military.
There were tobacco pouches. Uh, and I guess these little
(19:43):
money belts, and they weren't used on clothes. Though. It
took about twenty years for the fashion industry to come
around and say, you know, I think these beat the
button in the class. Yeah, and for a couple of reasons. One,
these early zippers were not the best. They didn't work
every time, they would wear out pretty quickly, and they
(20:05):
were still rather expensive. This is like cutting edge technology
at the time. Zippers were not cheap. Um. But one
of the other big reasons why zippers took a while
to catch on even after they started being used in
men's wear, um, was because they were viewed as improper
for women, which I hadn't heard of, ed you No,
(20:26):
I mean it doesn't surprise me, but it's hysterical and
awful to think about the fact that they didn't initially
want zippers because it made it way too easy for
women to take their clothes off. Yeah, like like that
would just be it, like, oh, well, I can take
my clothes off a little more easily than I could
if these were buttons. So I'm going to become promiscuous
(20:46):
as a result. Yeah, just because that extra thirty seconds,
the mood passes. Yeah, it's true. Like well, yeah, I mean,
if you have trouble getting buttons off, I could see
getting frustrated, that could kill the mood. So maybe they
were onto something. But in the in the movie of set,
during this time, the tawdry couple rips opened the bodice
and they all laugh as as clasps are falling to
(21:08):
the floor. Yeah, it's true, it's true. Zipper is not
as funny. No, but it does make a seductive per
when it's pulled down at just the right just the
right timing hit in the right speed. It's titillating. It's arousing,
like yeah, there's nothing more tittilating than a quick little
it's open right like no, no, we're more of a man.
(21:35):
You gotta stop. Isn't that nice? Yeah? This is it's
getting little warmed down here in the bag. I know.
I'm glad we're not in the same room right now. So, uh,
Corset's especially found the zipper. The corset industry was like,
no way, are we going to use those vulgar zippers
on these things. We have morals where the fashion industry,
(21:56):
and they were even designers Elsa and Edward Malan No
or Malan new they were sort of sort of teasing
the establishment by purposefully including zippers and saying like, we
don't even need these, but look, we're doing it anyway
because it's the nineteen thirties in your face establishment. That's right,
(22:19):
button establishment, so right. One of the other big things, um,
that pushed things forward was the use of zippers and jeans,
And to this day there is a long standing debate
that I read about on the Levi's five oh one
Blues blog Wow, between zippers and button jeans, And apparently
(22:47):
there's purists who are like buttons were first. They were
on the first pair of Levi's back in three I think, um,
because they didn't have anything better. Basically, yeah, zipper people say,
well yeah, and then zippers came along and we didn't
need buttons anymore. Stuff living in the past, man, um.
But there's still an ongoing debate and raising debate. But
if you were to travel back to the nineteen thirties
(23:09):
and pick up a copy of Esquire magazine, you would
find that the Battle of the Fly, I believe is
what it was called, was declared dead, and that the
zipper one was around back then. Oh yeah, they're nice, Yeah,
just cutting edge stuff. I am not opposed to a
five oh one button fly. I agree that it's kind
(23:30):
of classic. I'm generally a zipper guy, but I don't
mind a button fly. I well, I was reading a
recent Esquire right up about the nineteen thirties Esquire right up,
which is kind of weird now I think about it.
But um, they were saying, like, yes, the button does
(23:50):
have some advantages. It's a lot harder to forget when
you leave the bathroom than it is you know, your fly. Um,
but it's harder to open up when you really need
to pee. That's a big problem. And as an adult
you can kind of regulate that, right, No, not me.
I have that brain bladder connection, like going full bore. Yeah,
(24:11):
I guess I can see that. So like having to
fumble with buttons while you're like about to just pee yourself,
it's not a good thing. But anyway, Esquire also put
it like this. Um they said that the button fly
also adds bulk, but not in the desirable spinal tap
way in a do you have some sort of terrible
(24:31):
condition way, it's pretty great. So I think they're right
there kind of wins the zipper debate. Yeah, well, you
know the other thing that won't happen with the button flies.
You're not gonna you're not gonna pull a something about
Mary moment. Hey, we'll say that for the end. I'm
just saying, alright, So, uh. In the nineties, we've got
(24:54):
children's clothing being a big sort of sales pitch for
zippers because they're like, hey, you want a kid that
can put their own clothes on and get to that
factory super fast, give them zippers. So um, I think
that's pretty genius. Actually, yeah, I mean he want he
wants to. I mean buttoning up a child's clothing is
(25:17):
the worst, right, especially if you have to use one
of a very dangerous button hook to do it. Yeah,
it's just not a good idea. You don't want to
get that anywhere near a kid. So, as is usual
with fashion, the children's fashion leads the way, um, and
paved the way for zippers to come in. Like I said,
to men's trousers. Eventually, women's clothing and then women's genes.
(25:39):
Zippers were finally added to jeans because of women. Apparently
Western women were totally fine with the buttonfly, but back
East they were a little more modest and decided the
buttonfly allowed too much breeze to blow through, and so
Levi's added zippers to their jeans to try to market
them to women in the East and the mid forties.
I'm surprised women were wearing jeans in the mid forties.
(26:01):
I was surprised by that too. Smells like Catherine Hepburn's
work if you ask me, But on those jeans, ladies,
that was amazing. So these I used to do a
pretty good Catherine Herburn. That was not my best effort,
it was still pretty good. Uh, you old poop. So
they went from producing the Hookless Fastener Company twenty four
(26:26):
thousand zippers that first year in nineteen seventeen in nineteen
thirty four sixty million, by nineteen seventy one two point
three billion, Yes founding, and by nine seventy one they
had changed their name again from Universal Fastener to Hookless
Fastener to now Talent. Make a note of that. Oh
(26:49):
that's right, Yeah, I put a little pin in that Okay,
so uh, these were zippers that were uh and we
have all the name. These were called closed ends sippers.
That is, it's on a pair of jeans or something.
It's not like you're trying to put together to completely
unattached things like a jacket. Let's say, right, that would
(27:11):
be the next big thing that yeah. So yeah, there's
actually apparently three main kinds of zippers which I wasn't
aware of. But the the the ones like on jeans
or whatever, that's the close end. The ones separate like
on a jacket or something like that that opens all
the way. Those are open end. And then you've got
the show offs of the zipper world, the two way zippers.
(27:34):
They think they're all that, yeah, but apparently, and there's
like all sorts of subcategories to like, for example, there's
the two way closed zipper where when the when you
open the thing you have to pull, the zipper slides
toward one another and when they meet they keep one
another from from sliding off or opening further. But if
you look at the say suitcase or whatever, it actually
(27:57):
forms an X with the two zippers lines in the middle.
That's an X type two way closed zipper in industry lingo. Yeah,
and it's here that I should point out that, um
something that I don't think I've ever talked about much
on the show. But I am a bag enthusiast. Oh yeah, backpacks,
(28:18):
luggage over the shoulder, bags, messenger bags, Merses, I've got.
I do have a merse um. Shout out to nut Sack, Merses, No, No,
and ut Dash s A C. Sure it's great. Still
it doesn't matter now it's that's the name of the company.
(28:40):
Oh got, It's got a little acorn on the front
of it. That's it's very cheeky, obviously, But I stand
by my Nutsack. It's great. Let me ask you, how
did you end up becoming like a bad guy. I
don't know, man, there's something about finding the perfect bad
bag with all there's something about all the compartments that
(29:03):
fit just the right things. I don't know. I think
I'm a little bit of a O. C. D spectrum
thing um that I've talked about here and there over
the years, with stepping on cracks and doing certain things
an equal amount of times with each foot in each hand,
Like I don't let it drive me or control me.
But all that stuff is in there and I think
(29:23):
it has something to do with my bag thing is
having seeking out the perfect bag that holds all of
my things in exactly the right way. Very nice. But
I mean, when did this start? Was it like middle school,
high school? College? I think I always was sort of
into them, but like I was happy to just have
the backpack that was just okay because I was young
(29:44):
and broke. But now that I'm an adult, you know,
I can I can try a couple of different bags
out and I recycled them. I don't have a room
full of bags. Emily will will disagree and say that
I have far too many bags and some that don't
get used. But I did just recently sell a bag
um to to a guy like how like on the
(30:04):
street now it was I put it on Facebook and
it was ended up going to a husband of someone
I knew that. He was like, he wants this thing.
I was like great, so um, anyway, I have a
bad thing. And there's a sub category of people on
the internet travel people that are really into bags and
especially zippers. That's where this all comes in. There is
(30:25):
a lot of zipper talk on these sites because they're
not all designed well and you've got to have a
really great zipper system in order to be a great bag.
That is the thing. That's one of the best easiest
ways you can tell a knockoff bag, even a well
made knockoff bag, from the real thing is how good
is the zipper? Yeah, I get the impression that really
(30:46):
nice zippers aren't the cheapest things to include in a bag. No. No,
because anybody can dash off a zipper. Yeah, we could
make one right now if we wanted to. Sure it
was arts and crafts time, but it's not. It's talking time.
It we couldn't make a really well made zipper. No.
And a complaint you will see oftentimes on these websites
(31:08):
is travel websites is great bag. But boy, why did
they put this zipper on this thing? Right? And so,
I mean, when you put a zipper on a bag
or a pair of jeans or something like that, it
is done, like there's not any any redoing this this thing. Like,
if it's a good zipper, great, If it's a bad zipper,
you just ruined the bag or ruined the jeans. And
then once the zipper inevitable inevitably breaks, the bag is useless.
(31:32):
The genes are useless, and that's actually a mark in
the favor of buttons. You can replace a button that
pops off when the zipper breaks, Yeah, you can fix it.
There's definitely videos on how to deal with different um
zipper issues. But when it's broken, broken, there's there's it's
a problem. It's a lot more of a problem than
when a button pops off, I guess, is what I'm
(31:53):
trying to say. Yeah, I agree. Um, And here's the
point where we uh where I'm going to call on you.
Maybe we'll take a break. I knew you were going
to do this. I am because you somehow made describing
how a zipper works confusing. So this is on you
and we'll talk. Josh will explain exactly how a zipper works.
Right after this. Oh man, I want to learn about
(32:31):
a rosortic college actol, how to take a perfect with
all about fractal kiscon that's a little hun the Lizzie
Border murders, that they kind of all runs on the plane.
Everything that's we should know. Word up, Jerry, So let
me think of some movies. Uh have you seen? Have
(32:53):
you seen Altered Carbon? I know it's not a movie,
it's a good TV show though. I have not. That's good. Um,
I already talked about ozarks recently. Right, are you putting
this off? Yeah? All right. I'll describe how to use
a zipper because I didn't realize this before. Did you
know just how a zipper worked? You did not? I did?
(33:16):
You can look at it and tell how it works. Well,
I've looked at plenty of zippers, and I guess it
hasn't sunk in. I finally had to read what's going
on down there? Magic? I thought a little magic wizard
lived in each zipper slide and would be like Alec Gazoo.
I think what you're saying is you didn't realize all
those parts had names. Maybe that's definitely part of it,
(33:38):
but no, I also didn't understand the physics. I'm gonna
do this. You're ready, stand back? So uh. With every
kind of zipper, you have teeth, and you put the
teeth together and you have a zipper chain. You have
the thing that moves up and down the zipper that's
called the slide, and the slide itself is usually made
up of the slide body that the zipper teeth go through,
(34:00):
a bridge that's connected to the slide body, and a
puller or a tab that's connected to the bridge. Okay, okay,
So when these teeth are manufacturers will talk about in
a second. They're made so that they're all the exact
same size and shape, but then when they're connected, they're offset,
(34:22):
so that if you take two teeth in between the teeth,
a little hole or hollow or valley forms and the
teeth on the opposite side of the fabric that's going
to be connected. The tooth fits into that hollow just so,
but it doesn't fit in just so so that it
could just pull right out. It has a little hook
(34:42):
on the end of it, and so when the slide
body comes in contact with the teeth on either side,
it has like wedges inside the slide body that kick
those teeth up at an angle or down at an angle,
and it also pulls them together. So it actually takes
the tooth and puts it at an angle so that
(35:03):
it fits into the hollow between the other two teeth
on the other side. And then as it passes by,
that tooth goes back to horizontal and it's locked in.
The little hook on the end locks it into that hollow,
and from being locked in, it provides stability for the
teeth that are connected on either side above it, and
so on and so forth, so that as the slide
(35:24):
finally reaches at the top, it hits a stop which
keeps the slide from going off the end um. And
it's done. It's a little job when it comes back down.
When you pull down on the slide to un zip,
it actually uses a reverse wedge of plow to kick
those wedges back up and separate them so that they
can easily the hook tooth can easily pull out of
(35:46):
the hollow and separate. And that, friend, is how a
zipper works. That's great. Oh, I haven't pressed your court.
I just went ahead of Mike's mighty good ramen. I
had one of those two. I had the kimchi one
out of the pork um. That was good, chuck. If
(36:07):
you hadn't it checked out, you would. I was frankly
expecting a little round of applause. Oh, people are clapping
all over the world right now. Good good, Okay, So
it is great. Uh. It's such an elegant design because
what you're doing here, and it's easy to take for granted,
but what you are tasked with with doing with making
a quality zipper is making something that is very very
(36:29):
easy to zip up and down or back and forth,
because you don't want that thing to get hung up
or to be hard to pull. It's got to be
really easy, but it also has to be super super secure.
And the and the marriage of those two things I
think is kind of really speaks to the elegance of
the design of the zipper exactly. And the more the
(36:49):
more well designed and well manufactured the teeth are, the
tighter that bind is going to be, yeah, because they
fit together so precisely. Yeah, if you've had zipper problems
and bad zippers, that's when it that's when you really
need to to thank your lucky stars that people are
(37:12):
out there designing and making great zippers, right, which are
just too expensive to easily be attained. Or like when
that stop doesn't work and you go to zip up
at that jacket and all of a sudden, you're you're
holding that bull tab and the bridge right like a dummy. Yeah,
so there are things there. It's the worst you can
(37:35):
So there's actually little clamps that you can put on
a zipper broken zipper. I saw a video about this
that fit in between like the top two teeth on
either side, and then you just take some need on
those pliers and basically clamp it on the on the
inside and outside of the zipper fabric tape and that
will stop that slide. So if the slide ever comes off,
(37:57):
because this one of the stops broke off, you can
actually take um not at all drastic measures to fix
your zipper. Not me, man, I throw that jacket in
the garbage right to set it on fire force at
least all the methane inside. I do, and then I
sweep up the ashes, a urinate on them, and I
put it in the garbage. You turn it into a
(38:18):
six pack ring and throw it into the ocean. Now
that is a good tip actually, because there are ways
to darn socks and fix zippers. And we live in
a disposable society. So if you have a cheap zipper,
or you know, if you really like a jacket and
it has a terrible zipper, you could take it to
a place and they could probably put the zipper of
choice on there. But that's a lot of work. It
(38:39):
is a lot of work. There are things that you
can do yourself. You can also um if the zipper
slide is not doing a very good job any longer
of connecting the teeth. It's probably because the wedges inside
are a little loose, a little far apart. Again, needle
nose pliers are your best friend. Pinch the zippers from
the side and from the front and back. You're not
(39:00):
the zipper the slide mechanism. Sorry, and it will, um,
it will. It'll produce a tighter grip on the zipper
teeth from that point on. Again, basically you're breathing new
life into your zipper slide. Yeah, and uh failed to
mention that I'm also an outdoorsman and camper my whole life,
so aside from my bag fetish um sleeping bags intense.
(39:23):
That's a real big deal to have the right zipper
on those things. Yeah, that'll that. This the worst is
and especially on tense, the design such that, um, when
you're zipping it, the little flap gets zipped up in
the zipper. Yes, that's pretty bad. It's awful. It is,
um and that's something you can deal with yourself. But
(39:45):
zippers can also get stuck over time, especially if it's
a metal zipper and it's starting to corrode. They don't
like to slide nearly as much. There are little things,
little tip tips and tricks you can do to unstick
a zipper that's a little corroded. One of the first
things you can do is take a graphite pencil and
rub it on the teeth just below the zipper. And
(40:06):
graphites a dry lubricant and it'll help you unzip it
if the If the pencil doesn't work, try a little
bit of bar soap, dry bar soap, and if that
doesn't work, to spray a little squirt tiny stream of
windex on there and let it sit for a little
while and that should unzip your corroded or gunky zipper too. Yeah,
very good tips here from Uncle Josh. Right. So there's
(40:30):
some other things, Like we just basically described how zipper works.
What is zippers made out of um? Or what the
components are. There are some other things that they make
some little fancy dancy kind of a kouchruma to zippers um.
One of the things UH that comes in handy is, say,
like with a tent or something, when you want the
zipper to stay up, is a locking slide to where
(40:52):
it won't like you could pull the zipper apart and
it won't come apart because that slide won't move. It
only moves when you pull on the tab because it
lifts the locking mechanism as you slide up or down.
That's a good one. They also make magnetic zippers, which
is good for one handed zipping and unzipping. It's amazing.
I think so too. So let's talk a little bit
(41:12):
about how it's made and then we're going to bring
it home with a little manufacturing and medical action. Okay, Yeah,
so zippers, it depends on what it's made out of. Obviously,
with how it's made. UM a lot of zippers, you'll
see her metal um. They can be flat or they
can be profiled. They can be made of aluminium, nickel, brass, nickel,
(41:36):
free white brass, nickel, aluminum, brass, aminium right, nickelodeon. I'm
just reporting what I found on the internet, not making
fun of you. Uh. They can be die cast out
of zinc alloy directly onto that tape and you end
up just sewing that or gluing that onto the material.
(41:58):
And I imagined that might be a bit of a
more robust zipper. Yeah. The that that machine that Gideon's
sunback Um came up with is still The design principle
of it is still in use in some zipper manufacturers
where they take wire and just like pinch and pull
and clamp the zipper teeth out of wire onto this
(42:22):
zipper tape the fabric that's going to be put onto
the material that the zippers applied to you. That's right.
If you're working with plastic, there's basically two main ways.
And I saw really great how it's made. It's like
five minutes long, but it just explains it all um.
With plastic, there's a couple of reasons why you would
want plastic. You can actually manufacture plastic two more precise
(42:45):
design specifications if you're doing it right than metal zipper,
which means that it may actually provide a stronger grip.
It also doesn't corrode, although metal zippers are typically thought
of as is tougher over time, but they they they
will corrode. Plastic doesn't corrode. But if you're making plastic,
you can make it a couple of ways. One you
(43:05):
can make it basically just like a metal zippers made
by die casting it. And then another way is to
actually print it onto the tape, so like the whole
zipper to the exact length you want is just basically
formed and melted onto the fabric tape, and then there's
your zipperty. It can be super super solid. It's not
(43:29):
like a plastic zipper has to be cheap, no uh.
And then if you want a flexible plastic zipper, there's
something called a woven coil nylon zipper. And you've probably
seen this before, like on a dress that's meant to
have movement or something like that. It's a it's a
very thin um it's almost like a nest of of
(43:52):
nylon woven on either side, and the zipper just moves
up and down it. You've seen those before, I'm sure
I have. Don't play me bro. Most of my dresses
require movement, that's for sure. So I think we should
talk a little bit about y K k uh. If
you've ever looked down and seen a zipper, the chances
(44:12):
are you have if you've ever worn any article of
clothing and seeing y KK. That stands for Yoshida Kogyo
Kabushiki Kasha, which is UM a Japanese company that makes these.
Where else making Georgia. Yeah, that's like their biggest plan
is in making Yeah, and I knew it was in making.
(44:33):
Actually they make about five million zippers a day. Uh.
They started making zippers the Japanese company in four They
make theirs out of copper alloy, and they're really smart.
This is a company that UM. They build the machines
that make the zippers, they build the boxes and make
the boxes that they ship them in. So they have
(44:54):
a lot of control over the the pricing of their
supply chain, which is a great way to make a
lot more money than you would if you were outsourcing
that stuff right exactly. And so y k K kind
of came up. They started in the ninety four, but
by nineteen seventy they really started to take over the
(45:15):
zipper industry, so much so that prior to nineteen seventy
a little company called Talent, which you might know of
as the hookless fastener company, UM had seventy percent of
the market share. Seven out of all ten zippers that
you found in the world were made by Talent, And
by nineteen seventy one suddenly y KK had like of that,
(45:37):
and they were the big kid on the block for
decades until basically recently, when UM some Chinese firms started
to really come up to yeah, and the Chinese firms.
There used to be hundreds of these and they have
now sort of been consolidated down to like how many
do they have over there now? Yeah, but there's really
two big ones now, SPS and y KK. Right, and
(46:02):
a lot of these Chinese companies will be called things
like y q Q or y c C right obviously
trying to uh sort of rip off the y k
K company. And it's like any business where there are
some big, big players, there's fierce, fierce rivalries in the
zipper industry. Yumi said that when she was a kid,
her mom wouldn't buy something if the zipper wasn't y KK.
(46:24):
Sure you know it's quality zipper right there, made by
relatives of the Allman Brothers problem. That's right, that's where
the museum is so um. So that's why y KK
has found on most your zippers because of this company
that has been doing this for a very long time. Right,
It's pretty amazing. And I feel like, Chuck, we would
be remiss in talking about zippers if we also didn't
(46:48):
talk about, as you kind of teased earlier, Genitalia getting
caught in zippers, which is one of the big drawbacks
of zipper technology. Yeah, the very famous Signfelt episode when
he's remarking about his button flies. You want to do
your best Jerry Seinfeld. Here, this is the one place
on my wardrobe. I do not need sharp, inter locking
(47:10):
metal tee. Oh I think you had Seinfeld confused with
Silence of the Lambs. Which fun Buffalo Bill or Hannibal
elector Seinfeld of the Lambs. Oh wait, let me see
if I do it. Just do one place on my wardrobe.
I do not need sharpen or locking metal tea. Except
(47:32):
he would not have a zipper on his kimono. Was
that better or worse the second time? I don't know.
They were both great. I think worse. I'm going with
so Yeah, it's um. There are zipper injuries, mostly with
boys and men. That was a group in two thousand
thirteen and the urologists in San Francisco that's published an
(47:53):
actual study about zipper injuries in between two thousand two
in there were close to eighteen thousand men and boys
who had had zipper accidents um at the emergency room
with some variation of a something about mary type of injury. Yeah,
that's that's not that's just the ones that were bad
(48:16):
enough to go to the emergency room. Yeah, not the
ones that are like, ah, let me just put some
ointment on that, right, But that's exactly the treatment that
those guys got at the at the emergency room. Apparently
the treatment for it was described by a doctor, a
pediatric doctor, who said, I'm just gonna read this whole thing. Okay, Yes,
(48:36):
you want to just pour mineral oil all over the
patient's genitalia and the zipper be generous, that's the key.
This is pretty cheap stuff. Then let the patients sit
there for twenty or thirty minutes, pack him in a
room somewhere, and when you come back, the four skin
will have simply slipped out of that zipper, although in
some cases you may need a cotton swab to help
(48:58):
it along a bit. You know, my favorite part of
that whole quote, right, what it was when he's talking
about how inexpensive mineral oil is. Right, because you know,
mineral oil, you can just afford to just douse your
testicles with that stuff because it's pretty cheap. This isn't
like you know something, um Martin. Sure Kelly would invest
(49:21):
in what god farmer bro. Yeah, he would never buy
into a mineral oil company not profitable enough. I guarantee
that he's trying to get rich off of coronavirus. I
think he's in prison again. No, he's still He's probably
got his minions. Um, yeah, probably so. Yeah, you can
(49:41):
get your your junk zipped up in there. Uh, I
had I don't understand why a man would go commando
to me, the underwear is one of the biggest benefits
is to avoid zipper related injuries. But people do it,
and I just imagine you've got to be super careful. Yeah,
(50:02):
not just men too. There were five women in that
group of seventeen thousand, six hundred and sixteen emergency room visits.
Five women got caught in there. But for young boys, Chuck,
I thought this was the fact of the podcast. The
number one cause of penile injury was not zippers. Zippers
were second. Number one was getting smashed by the toilet lid.
(50:27):
How for real? Yeah, I mean you know they're they're
right there at lid height. I guess so I was
forgetting about the height difference. Okay, that's sad. You got
anything else, guys, I got nothing else? Well, that's zippers, everybody. Um,
we made it through Zippers is the new Sun. And
(50:50):
since I said zippers is the new Sun, it's time
for a listener. Male. Ah, this is from Kirsten and
we're gonna uh not exclusively, but I like reading these
emails about how we're helping folks out during this weird,
weird time of isolation, and this is this is one
of those. Hey, guys, thanks so much for the podcast.
(51:12):
My boyfriend Matt introduced me The Stuff You Should Know
a while back, and it has been a godsend for
our relationship. You see on car rides and road trips,
he always wants to listen to something that he will
learn from. I, on the other hand, am much more
interested in listening to something funny and lighthearted. Your podcast
strikes the perfect balance. Every time we listen to your show,
(51:32):
we always laugh together and we both learn a little
something too. Kirsten, we've been trying to explain that in
such a sixtinct way for twelve years now. Yeah, that
was really well done. Matt works in the I c
U and has been working long hours amid the coronavirus pandemic.
To pass the time alone at home, I've been listening
to a lot of Stuff You Should know. So I
want to thank you guys for keeping me company. And
(51:53):
if you wanted to give a shout out to Matt
and all of our amazing healthcare workers across the country,
that would be awesome and we certainly certainly want to
do that. Yeah, give it up, like it's eight pm
for all of the healthcare workers, including Matt. That's right.
That is uh, you know, beyond everything that's going on
with this there. It's not like everyone decided to take
(52:16):
a break from getting hurt and needing to go to
the emergency room. Have you been Have you been more
careful than usual just to make sure you don't, like
accidentally need to go. No, I can't think about that
stuff because that's when I will get hurt. I thought
about it climbing up a ladder my house, Well, I
don't know if I'd be doing a ladder work right now.
(52:37):
I had to we looked like there was a carpenter
b that made its way through our upper window, and
I had to look, well, I'm glad you were careful,
but yeah, it's um. That kind of just hit me
the other day that like, oh wait, there's still all
the other hospital stuff that has to happen right now. Yeah,
it's true. I have a friend who's a oh, our nurse.
(52:59):
I believe even she was saying that she'd been basically
furloughed for the moment because any elective surgery was um,
you know, put on hold, which is understandable, but she
was explaining that elective meant like your gall blighter needs
to be removed, or you have a tumor that needs
to be removed. It was considered elective at least temporarily.
(53:20):
I think that she's back at work again. But that's
how bad it was. It was just like, if it
doesn't have to do with COVID, no, just say no. Yeah,
I mean I was. I was just about to schedule
an eye surgery and uh, I'm definitely gonna wait a
while to do that. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine, I
can imagine. Um. Well that was great. Who is that from?
(53:43):
That was from Kirston and Matt. Yes, well, thanks a
lot Kirston, and thanks a lot, Matt, and thanks a
lot to everybody who's fighting the good fight on the
front lines of the health care battle right now, looking
out for all of us. Our hats are off to you.
If you want to get in touch with us like
Kirston Matt did. We'll get in touch of this via email.
Wrap your email up to thank you do on the bottom,
(54:04):
and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the
podcast everybody. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck trans
Drip Drip Drip Bryant over there. Jerry's somewhere out in
the ether, floating along in an alternate dimension of chaos
(00:25):
and disorder. Uh. And this is stuff you should know,
that's right? Uh. Inventor series, well, sure, inventors in this case,
lots of inventors. Um. First, I want to say check.
I gotta fully prepare the studio, the little house studio.
Here there we go. So I've just sprayed a couple
(00:49):
of sprits is of Mama Brand Grapefruit tangerine aromatherapy room spray,
and I'm feeling energized and ready to go. Oh good,
that's very nice. That is some stuff, man. I need
some of that in my basement. Oh you should have
loads of it? I should? I do? I just don't
have it down here? Where where could somebody find it
(01:09):
if they weren't me already know where to find it?
I wish you gotta love your Mama dot com and
support small businesses that sell soap. When you need soap.
Very nice, Chuck, very nice, and yes, I can attest.
This is some fine room spray. And you're washing your
hands a lot, so get some motion because you're probably dry.
I'm just using the room spray as everything. Oh yeah, yeah, lotion, soap,
(01:32):
what else you know? Essential oil? Stuff like that lip bomb,
all all the good things to make you slippery. So,
speaking of slippery, Chuck, you know something that's not really
slippery when you use it correctly, a zipper. It's been
a while, as far as the segway goes, so give
(01:54):
me a break. It's been a while. Yeah, I I oh, oh,
you just reminded me of something. Hold on, hold on,
I'm very sorry. I gotta do this. I'm so glad
you reminded me. Though. So you sang that song somehow
it reminded me of breakfast at Tiffany's. That song that
duo is friends with our buddy Toby hal Brooks. Toby
(02:18):
hal Brooks and his lovely wife and Nell just had
their first baby. Oh Toby had a baby. Yes, So
congratulations to Toby and and Nell. They have a cute
little baby too. I've seen a picture of her and
she is adorable. So congrats guys, and way to go.
That's amazing. I'm very happy for them. Toby is a
great guy. And I don't know if I met his wife,
(02:40):
have I It don't know. I don't think I have.
Maybe it's south by Southwest. Maybe that was a long
time ago. It was a while back. Yeah, I remember
eating a drinking and eating Bloody Mary's with bacon and cheese,
and that was one of those places that had it
all in the glass. Yeah, it was nice at the
(03:02):
Drexel Hotel. Right, Yeah, that was a good day or
driscal dri driscyll all of that from It's been a while.
So let's talk about buttons and then zippers. Okay, So
I um thought that this was a pretty cool intro
if you ask me, because if you think about zippers,
you think zippers they're great. Who needs to think much
(03:23):
about them? Well, you do, pal, because you are blessed
to be living in an age where zippers exist. Because
it was not too long ago, um about a hundred years,
a little over a hundred years that there weren't zippers.
You had a button basically, maybe some clasps, nothing that
you were going to be happy dealing with. And most
(03:45):
of the time. For most of human history, it was
a button that was our only option to to to
connect two pieces of fabric and hold it in place,
which is more important than you would think. Chuck, the
dumb clumsy button has been around. I think the earliest
button that we found comes from a settlement settlement in
the Indus Valley civilization which is now modern day Pakistan.
(04:09):
Uh And it was a curbed shell. It's about five
thousand years old. And buttons back then, this was sort
of even pre buttonhole they were they were loops. Um.
If you've ever had one of those cool old school
uh well, some pea coats have the have the loops,
some don't. But I'm kind of thinking of the the
loop and bone thing that some of these kind of
(04:32):
corduroy coats have had. Or like if you were a
cape and probably you've probably encountered something like this. Yeah,
my cape definitely has a loop and bone. One of
my capes, say Pakistan, but like Sammy Davis Jr. Pakished
on babe, very nice, very nice. So um, the button
(04:53):
from what I understand though, from this, you know, five
thousand years ago up to a little less than a
thousand years ago. For the most part, it was just
basically for showing off, you know, like, yeah, you could
use it to clasp a couple of pieces of material together, whatever.
But for the most part it was an adornment. It
was like jewelry. And it wasn't until I think the
thirteenth century that buttons started to be taken seriously for
(05:17):
the first time, where you had the first button makers
guild formed in France in twelve fifty. That was a
big watershed moment in the history of buttons. Yeah, the French.
They basically everyone was like, guys, we've had buttons for
a long time. I think it's about time we start
taking these things seriously. Yeah, this is it's been amateur,
our bush league stuff up to this point. Let's let's
(05:37):
get serious about buttons. And they did. So they really
stopped and thought, well, we can make this better. Forget
that loop that you put things through, and you know,
the button can just fall right right back through. What
if we make a hole in the actual fabric that
we're trying to connect itself, so some edges around it
and make what we'll eventually call a button hole. How
(05:58):
about that? And this act really as simple as that
is just made clothing technology jump by light years. Yeah,
that was a big deal because, uh, those loops can
break off, and often do, but sometimes they just dissolve
in the sun. Yeah, those buttonholes did. They don't break
I guess if you were really hard on them, they
(06:19):
could eventually split to the seam. But there were a
lot better than those loops. And you know, buttons they
were the thing. They were around for a long time.
They were just sort of the way that you've fastened
two pieces of clothing together. But at some point someone
was like, there's got to be a better way. Like
every great invention, not every great imation, but many great
(06:41):
inventions were built on someone trying to do something in
a better way. Yeah, because I mean even when the
buttons working on all four cylinders, which is as many
as it has, there's still some real flaws in it,
and that the fabric that you're pulling together and holding
together with the uton might be held at the button point,
(07:02):
but above and below that button there's a big old hole,
and who knows what's sticking out of there, you know
what I'm saying. I'm sure buttons can also pop off.
There's some problems with it, and with those flaws like
you're saying. Some people said, there's got to be a
better way, and as a progression of people started to
kind of vibe on the same idea, separately from what
(07:23):
I understand. And the first of the bunch was a
guy named Elias how Jr. Who in eighteen fifty one
got himself a patent for a automatic continuous clothing closure.
That's right, was what he called it. Not exactly catchy. Yeah.
So his idea was, you you saw some reinforcements to
a couple of edges of material that you want to
(07:46):
you know, join together in wedded union, and you connect
them with all these, uh class a series of clasps,
but they are connected by a cord running or sliding
as he says in the pattern up on ribs. Not
the best invention, and it didn't work that great because
(08:07):
they were clasps like this was the pred the predecessor
of the zipper, to be sure it was. He was
not on it like later inventors would be. No, but
the idea of pulling on like a pull and moving
like a mechanism across you know, two pieces of fabric,
(08:27):
enjoining it together in its wake. That is the clearly
the foundation of zippers, Like this guy clearly laid the
foundation and probably would be considered the father of the zipper.
But he left everything just sitting there in his patent.
He never pursued it, and um, most people think that
the reason he didn't pursue it because he had bigger
(08:47):
fish to fry in the form of the modern sewing machine.
He was also the inventor of the sewing machine, and
he's like, I'm feel a little more bullish about the
sewing machine than than the zipper. To use um clap
seeing economy type terms. That's right. So the father of
the zipperh is a man or generally known as this
man from Chicago named Whitcomb Judson. This is about forty
(09:13):
four years after Howe's had. How had filed his patent
and he marketed and sold, which meant, you know, he
kind of owned it then as a clasp blocker or
unlocker for shoes, which, um, it was interesting that he
was that narrow in his design. I think, I don't
(09:35):
know if it was at the time. I think now
you try and go as broad as you can with patents,
But back then he was like, this thing works great
for shoes, uh, and shoes are kind of a pain
to put on, so that was what we're going to
use them for. Yeah, I mean, he was like, this
is a real problem because again, we have buttons mostly
for shoes, and you know, because shoes were fairly form fitting,
(10:00):
you needed a lot of buttons per inch in a
row to really hold these two pieces of fabric together,
one flap over another. So these buttons were small and
they were sewn close together, so close in fact, that
they invented another um UH invention called the button button hook,
and it was like a little handheld harpoon, a mini
(10:21):
harpoon with the hook on the end, and you would
push it through the button hole and pull the button
out with it, and you do this like eight ten
thousand times per shoe. And that was how you put
shoes on. So, I mean, I'm sure people just put
shoes on once when they were grown adult and just
didn't take them off until they were buried, you know.
(10:41):
So he was trying to solve the solution with a
poll that you could just kind of do the same
thing with. And he he really took Alia's house, and
again I'm not sure if it was because he was
familiar with the patent or not um, but he he
took that and basically said, this is this is worth pursuing,
this is this is important stuff here. Yeah. So, like
(11:04):
many great inventors, he got together with a business person,
a man named Colonel Lewis Walker, because a lot of
times inventors like to toil away in the shop and
tinker with things, and they need like a real business
brain to kind of run the show. Why is it
always a colonel though, Why not like a major or general?
Is it always a colonel? Yeah, Colonel Tom Parker, Colonel Sanders,
(11:27):
Colonel Sanders, Colonel Bruce Springsteen, colonel colonel Colonel So he
got together with Walker, Colonel Walker, and launched the Universal
Fastener Company to manufacture and sell the Judson Security Fastener.
(11:47):
Very clever there the letter c dash Curity Fastener. Uh
And like so many huge products, were debuted at the
Chicago World's Fair and was a huge hit it except
that it wasn't No, And I have to say, admittedly
it took me at least twice to realize it wasn't
cocurret e. Really, yeah, it wasn't the first time. But
(12:12):
so in that World's Fair, Um. They when they debuted it,
this is have you ever read Devil in the White
City before it? Man, you're really gonna like it, Chuck.
But anyway, it was that world's fair. God the Guide
us such a great job of describing that that world's fair,
and like the importance of it. As far as I know,
(12:34):
he doesn't mention zippers, but he may because he did
some pretty good research obviously. But the whole thing was
a flop for a couple of reasons. They were really
unreliable at the time, and they were really expensive, and
when you looked really closely at them, they still weren't
what you'd recognize as zippers. They had little class, but
it was a little class hook combo. And when you
(12:56):
dragged this this mechanism up, the clasps were pulled toward
one another and hooked. When you pulled it down they
would be unhooked. You also could just do the whole
thing by hand, but again it was still like this
clearly the foundation for zippers, but it wasn't quite right. Um.
Luckily whitcome Judson didn't give up. Instead, he hired a
(13:19):
guy named Gideon son Back who basically came in and
is in my opinion, the true father of the Zipper, right,
I think that seems like a natural breakpoint. I thought,
so to tease it there with Gideon son to back,
and we will come right back and talk about son
to Back right after this. I want to learn about
(13:53):
astortic college, how to take a perfect but all about
fractalkiscon un the Lizzie Border murders and the guy I've
all runs on the plane every day that we should know.
Ward up, Jerry, there was a hundred and ten percent
chance that this is going to be a little sillier
than average. What the zipper episode? Mhmm, all right, because
(14:17):
they're so silly, they are so before we broke. I
don't know if you remember you called Gideon son Back
the true father of the zipper? Uh? He did I
say that? I don't know, but he is the father
of the zipper because he made what we all recognize
as a zipper. He was Swedish born and he was
(14:37):
an electrical engineer, which is kind of interesting. You would
think mechanical, but I guess you just knew how to
tinker with things. He was a bit of a show
off apparently. Oh yeah, well, I mean he was an
electrical engineer who who was the father of the zipper?
Come on, oh, I got you. You know he was
a glory hog, Colonel Bruce Prings. He was hired to
(14:59):
work for that Universal Fastener company and he married the
plant manager's daughter, one Elvira Aaronson. It's a great name, which, um,
he was talented, so I'm not saying he got it
sherely because of nepotism, but he did get a position
as a head designer at that company, and he was like,
(15:20):
this security fastener is okay, but it really ain't all that.
His wife very sadly passed on in nineteen eleven, and
that really just gave him the time to pour himself
into a project. A couple of years later, December of
about a being bought a boom. You've got the zipper. Yeah. Um.
(15:40):
He created the hookless number one and the hookless number two,
And he said in an interview later that like the
key was getting rid of those hooks, terrible books, the hooks.
Everyone was so sick of these stupid hooks. But when
he came up with the hookless number one and the
hookless number two, and the hookless number two is what
you would say there's your modern zipper right there. It
was such a big deal that UM the company changed
(16:04):
its name from Universal Fastener to Hookless Fastener Company. So
that's I mean, that's pretty big. Like you know, you've
kind of made it as the head designer if you
design a product, and they changed the company name because
of it. And in this patent that Sunback got um
it basically it improved on that security fastener in a
(16:26):
number of ways. Rather than I think four clasps per inch,
he well, he changed the clasps to teeth. Was big
first steps. And then rather than four clasps per inch,
he added um at least ten or eleven teeth per inch.
So the more teeth or the more points of contact
(16:46):
where the fabrics joining together, the stronger that bond is
going to be. Um He He also created something UM
a machine to produce it with. And that's I think
where his electrical engineering stuff came in. Yeah, the scrapless
machine took this y shaped wire, cut these little scoops out,
and then punch that scoop dimple and little nib and
(17:09):
then clamped each one of those on a cloth tape.
And all these words sound weird when you're just saying
them like that. He invented the zipper. He did think
of the zipper, looked down at your zipper, and that's
what he did. That's what all those words mean. Yeah. Uh.
And again, like the stuff he was working with the
foundation wasn't like it wasn't a hop, skip and a jump.
(17:31):
This guy like really he really contributed to the world basically. Yeah,
and the world caught on. He was making a few
hundred feet of these a day initially, and the US
Army said, hey, these are great because here's what we've
got going on. We don't have pockets on our sailors pants.
(17:53):
I don't know why, and so they need to keep
stuff in there. So we give everybody these little Fannie packs. Basically,
these are money belts, and they're always losing their money,
these sailors, so we gotta have these zippers. We need
twenty four thousand of these to keep the sailor money
inside their Fannie packs. Yeah. I think they just assumed
that from that point on, anytime they went into port,
(18:15):
they would come back with all of their money. It
still didn't work, but it was clear they hadn't lost
it along the way. They just spent it. All. Yeah,
so twenty four thousand that year. Uh, in nineteen eighteen
they ordered ten thousand for pilot flight suits, which makes sense.
I gotta have those things. Yeah, sealed up and uh,
(18:37):
it still wasn't called a zipper at this point though.
That was the B. F. Good Rich company who actually
used his fastener sunbacks on these galoshes that they put
out in NT the notice that made a little zip sound,
and so they called these boots zippers. It wasn't actually
the zipper. They called the boots the zippers. Isn't that
fascinating the first the first use of the word zipper
(19:00):
described boots, not the zippers on the boots. Pretty cool.
I love it, and be of good Rich. I think
they still make at least souls for shoes too. Oh yeah, yeah.
Imagine going to the store and buying a pair of
BEF good Rich galoshes. You know those things are gonna last,
I would think. So you're wearing tires right right, you
(19:21):
can only buy them at the tire store, the most
boring place on earth. Oh yeah, with the worst coffee
and the worst magazines. Unless you're into monster trucking or
bass fishing, right then you're in Hong Heaven. So for
the first little bit, that's what the zipper was used for.
They were used for boots, they were using the military.
There were tobacco pouches. Uh, and I guess these little
(19:43):
money belts, and they weren't used on clothes. Though. It
took about twenty years for the fashion industry to come
around and say, you know, I think these beat the
button in the class. Yeah, and for a couple of reasons. One,
these early zippers were not the best. They didn't work
every time, they would wear out pretty quickly, and they
(20:05):
were still rather expensive. This is like cutting edge technology
at the time. Zippers were not cheap. Um. But one
of the other big reasons why zippers took a while
to catch on even after they started being used in
men's wear, um, was because they were viewed as improper
for women, which I hadn't heard of, ed you No,
(20:26):
I mean it doesn't surprise me, but it's hysterical and
awful to think about the fact that they didn't initially
want zippers because it made it way too easy for
women to take their clothes off. Yeah, like like that
would just be it, like, oh, well, I can take
my clothes off a little more easily than I could
if these were buttons. So I'm going to become promiscuous
(20:46):
as a result. Yeah, just because that extra thirty seconds,
the mood passes. Yeah, it's true. Like well, yeah, I mean,
if you have trouble getting buttons off, I could see
getting frustrated, that could kill the mood. So maybe they
were onto something. But in the in the movie of set,
during this time, the tawdry couple rips opened the bodice
and they all laugh as as clasps are falling to
(21:08):
the floor. Yeah, it's true, it's true. Zipper is not
as funny. No, but it does make a seductive per
when it's pulled down at just the right just the
right timing hit in the right speed. It's titillating. It's arousing,
like yeah, there's nothing more tittilating than a quick little
it's open right like no, no, we're more of a man.
(21:35):
You gotta stop. Isn't that nice? Yeah? This is it's
getting little warmed down here in the bag. I know.
I'm glad we're not in the same room right now. So, uh,
Corset's especially found the zipper. The corset industry was like,
no way, are we going to use those vulgar zippers
on these things. We have morals where the fashion industry,
(21:56):
and they were even designers Elsa and Edward Malan No
or Malan new they were sort of sort of teasing
the establishment by purposefully including zippers and saying like, we
don't even need these, but look, we're doing it anyway
because it's the nineteen thirties in your face establishment. That's right,
(22:19):
button establishment, so right. One of the other big things, um,
that pushed things forward was the use of zippers and jeans,
And to this day there is a long standing debate
that I read about on the Levi's five oh one
Blues blog Wow, between zippers and button jeans, And apparently
(22:47):
there's purists who are like buttons were first. They were
on the first pair of Levi's back in three I think, um,
because they didn't have anything better. Basically, yeah, zipper people say,
well yeah, and then zippers came along and we didn't
need buttons anymore. Stuff living in the past, man, um.
But there's still an ongoing debate and raising debate. But
if you were to travel back to the nineteen thirties
(23:09):
and pick up a copy of Esquire magazine, you would
find that the Battle of the Fly, I believe is
what it was called, was declared dead, and that the
zipper one was around back then. Oh yeah, they're nice, Yeah,
just cutting edge stuff. I am not opposed to a
five oh one button fly. I agree that it's kind
(23:30):
of classic. I'm generally a zipper guy, but I don't
mind a button fly. I well, I was reading a
recent Esquire right up about the nineteen thirties Esquire right up,
which is kind of weird now I think about it.
But um, they were saying, like, yes, the button does
(23:50):
have some advantages. It's a lot harder to forget when
you leave the bathroom than it is you know, your fly. Um,
but it's harder to open up when you really need
to pee. That's a big problem. And as an adult
you can kind of regulate that, right, No, not me.
I have that brain bladder connection, like going full bore. Yeah,
(24:11):
I guess I can see that. So like having to
fumble with buttons while you're like about to just pee yourself,
it's not a good thing. But anyway, Esquire also put
it like this. Um they said that the button fly
also adds bulk, but not in the desirable spinal tap
way in a do you have some sort of terrible
(24:31):
condition way, it's pretty great. So I think they're right
there kind of wins the zipper debate. Yeah, well, you
know the other thing that won't happen with the button flies.
You're not gonna you're not gonna pull a something about
Mary moment. Hey, we'll say that for the end. I'm
just saying, alright, So, uh. In the nineties, we've got
(24:54):
children's clothing being a big sort of sales pitch for
zippers because they're like, hey, you want a kid that
can put their own clothes on and get to that
factory super fast, give them zippers. So um, I think
that's pretty genius. Actually, yeah, I mean he want he
wants to. I mean buttoning up a child's clothing is
(25:17):
the worst, right, especially if you have to use one
of a very dangerous button hook to do it. Yeah,
it's just not a good idea. You don't want to
get that anywhere near a kid. So, as is usual
with fashion, the children's fashion leads the way, um, and
paved the way for zippers to come in. Like I said,
to men's trousers. Eventually, women's clothing and then women's genes.
(25:39):
Zippers were finally added to jeans because of women. Apparently
Western women were totally fine with the buttonfly, but back
East they were a little more modest and decided the
buttonfly allowed too much breeze to blow through, and so
Levi's added zippers to their jeans to try to market
them to women in the East and the mid forties.
I'm surprised women were wearing jeans in the mid forties.
(26:01):
I was surprised by that too. Smells like Catherine Hepburn's
work if you ask me, But on those jeans, ladies,
that was amazing. So these I used to do a
pretty good Catherine Herburn. That was not my best effort,
it was still pretty good. Uh, you old poop. So
they went from producing the Hookless Fastener Company twenty four
(26:26):
thousand zippers that first year in nineteen seventeen in nineteen
thirty four sixty million, by nineteen seventy one two point
three billion, Yes founding, and by nine seventy one they
had changed their name again from Universal Fastener to Hookless
Fastener to now Talent. Make a note of that. Oh
(26:49):
that's right, Yeah, I put a little pin in that Okay,
so uh, these were zippers that were uh and we
have all the name. These were called closed ends sippers.
That is, it's on a pair of jeans or something.
It's not like you're trying to put together to completely
unattached things like a jacket. Let's say, right, that would
(27:11):
be the next big thing that yeah. So yeah, there's
actually apparently three main kinds of zippers which I wasn't
aware of. But the the the ones like on jeans
or whatever, that's the close end. The ones separate like
on a jacket or something like that that opens all
the way. Those are open end. And then you've got
the show offs of the zipper world, the two way zippers.
(27:34):
They think they're all that, yeah, but apparently, and there's
like all sorts of subcategories to like, for example, there's
the two way closed zipper where when the when you
open the thing you have to pull, the zipper slides
toward one another and when they meet they keep one
another from from sliding off or opening further. But if
you look at the say suitcase or whatever, it actually
(27:57):
forms an X with the two zippers lines in the middle.
That's an X type two way closed zipper in industry lingo. Yeah,
and it's here that I should point out that, um
something that I don't think I've ever talked about much
on the show. But I am a bag enthusiast. Oh yeah, backpacks,
(28:18):
luggage over the shoulder, bags, messenger bags, Merses, I've got.
I do have a merse um. Shout out to nut Sack, Merses, No, No,
and ut Dash s A C. Sure it's great. Still
it doesn't matter now it's that's the name of the company.
(28:40):
Oh got, It's got a little acorn on the front
of it. That's it's very cheeky, obviously, But I stand
by my Nutsack. It's great. Let me ask you, how
did you end up becoming like a bad guy. I
don't know, man, there's something about finding the perfect bad
bag with all there's something about all the compartments that
(29:03):
fit just the right things. I don't know. I think
I'm a little bit of a O. C. D spectrum
thing um that I've talked about here and there over
the years, with stepping on cracks and doing certain things
an equal amount of times with each foot in each hand,
Like I don't let it drive me or control me.
But all that stuff is in there and I think
(29:23):
it has something to do with my bag thing is
having seeking out the perfect bag that holds all of
my things in exactly the right way. Very nice. But
I mean, when did this start? Was it like middle school,
high school? College? I think I always was sort of
into them, but like I was happy to just have
the backpack that was just okay because I was young
(29:44):
and broke. But now that I'm an adult, you know,
I can I can try a couple of different bags
out and I recycled them. I don't have a room
full of bags. Emily will will disagree and say that
I have far too many bags and some that don't
get used. But I did just recently sell a bag
um to to a guy like how like on the
(30:04):
street now it was I put it on Facebook and
it was ended up going to a husband of someone
I knew that. He was like, he wants this thing.
I was like great, so um, anyway, I have a
bad thing. And there's a sub category of people on
the internet travel people that are really into bags and
especially zippers. That's where this all comes in. There is
(30:25):
a lot of zipper talk on these sites because they're
not all designed well and you've got to have a
really great zipper system in order to be a great bag.
That is the thing. That's one of the best easiest
ways you can tell a knockoff bag, even a well
made knockoff bag, from the real thing is how good
is the zipper? Yeah, I get the impression that really
(30:46):
nice zippers aren't the cheapest things to include in a bag. No. No,
because anybody can dash off a zipper. Yeah, we could
make one right now if we wanted to. Sure it
was arts and crafts time, but it's not. It's talking time.
It we couldn't make a really well made zipper. No.
And a complaint you will see oftentimes on these websites
(31:08):
is travel websites is great bag. But boy, why did
they put this zipper on this thing? Right? And so,
I mean, when you put a zipper on a bag
or a pair of jeans or something like that, it
is done, like there's not any any redoing this this thing. Like,
if it's a good zipper, great, If it's a bad zipper,
you just ruined the bag or ruined the jeans. And
then once the zipper inevitable inevitably breaks, the bag is useless.
(31:32):
The genes are useless, and that's actually a mark in
the favor of buttons. You can replace a button that
pops off when the zipper breaks, Yeah, you can fix it.
There's definitely videos on how to deal with different um
zipper issues. But when it's broken, broken, there's there's it's
a problem. It's a lot more of a problem than
when a button pops off, I guess, is what I'm
(31:53):
trying to say. Yeah, I agree. Um, And here's the
point where we uh where I'm going to call on you.
Maybe we'll take a break. I knew you were going
to do this. I am because you somehow made describing
how a zipper works confusing. So this is on you
and we'll talk. Josh will explain exactly how a zipper works.
Right after this. Oh man, I want to learn about
(32:31):
a rosortic college actol, how to take a perfect with
all about fractal kiscon that's a little hun the Lizzie
Border murders, that they kind of all runs on the plane.
Everything that's we should know. Word up, Jerry, So let
me think of some movies. Uh have you seen? Have
(32:53):
you seen Altered Carbon? I know it's not a movie,
it's a good TV show though. I have not. That's good. Um,
I already talked about ozarks recently. Right, are you putting
this off? Yeah? All right. I'll describe how to use
a zipper because I didn't realize this before. Did you
know just how a zipper worked? You did not? I did?
(33:16):
You can look at it and tell how it works. Well,
I've looked at plenty of zippers, and I guess it
hasn't sunk in. I finally had to read what's going
on down there? Magic? I thought a little magic wizard
lived in each zipper slide and would be like Alec Gazoo.
I think what you're saying is you didn't realize all
those parts had names. Maybe that's definitely part of it,
(33:38):
but no, I also didn't understand the physics. I'm gonna
do this. You're ready, stand back? So uh. With every
kind of zipper, you have teeth, and you put the
teeth together and you have a zipper chain. You have
the thing that moves up and down the zipper that's
called the slide, and the slide itself is usually made
up of the slide body that the zipper teeth go through,
(34:00):
a bridge that's connected to the slide body, and a
puller or a tab that's connected to the bridge. Okay, okay,
So when these teeth are manufacturers will talk about in
a second. They're made so that they're all the exact
same size and shape, but then when they're connected, they're offset,
(34:22):
so that if you take two teeth in between the teeth,
a little hole or hollow or valley forms and the
teeth on the opposite side of the fabric that's going
to be connected. The tooth fits into that hollow just so,
but it doesn't fit in just so so that it
could just pull right out. It has a little hook
(34:42):
on the end of it, and so when the slide
body comes in contact with the teeth on either side,
it has like wedges inside the slide body that kick
those teeth up at an angle or down at an angle,
and it also pulls them together. So it actually takes
the tooth and puts it at an angle so that
(35:03):
it fits into the hollow between the other two teeth
on the other side. And then as it passes by,
that tooth goes back to horizontal and it's locked in.
The little hook on the end locks it into that hollow,
and from being locked in, it provides stability for the
teeth that are connected on either side above it, and
so on and so forth, so that as the slide
(35:24):
finally reaches at the top, it hits a stop which
keeps the slide from going off the end um. And
it's done. It's a little job when it comes back down.
When you pull down on the slide to un zip,
it actually uses a reverse wedge of plow to kick
those wedges back up and separate them so that they
can easily the hook tooth can easily pull out of
(35:46):
the hollow and separate. And that, friend, is how a
zipper works. That's great. Oh, I haven't pressed your court.
I just went ahead of Mike's mighty good ramen. I
had one of those two. I had the kimchi one
out of the pork um. That was good, chuck. If
(36:07):
you hadn't it checked out, you would. I was frankly
expecting a little round of applause. Oh, people are clapping
all over the world right now. Good good, Okay, So
it is great. Uh. It's such an elegant design because
what you're doing here, and it's easy to take for granted,
but what you are tasked with with doing with making
a quality zipper is making something that is very very
(36:29):
easy to zip up and down or back and forth,
because you don't want that thing to get hung up
or to be hard to pull. It's got to be
really easy, but it also has to be super super secure.
And the and the marriage of those two things I
think is kind of really speaks to the elegance of
the design of the zipper exactly. And the more the
(36:49):
more well designed and well manufactured the teeth are, the
tighter that bind is going to be, yeah, because they
fit together so precisely. Yeah, if you've had zipper problems
and bad zippers, that's when it that's when you really
need to to thank your lucky stars that people are
(37:12):
out there designing and making great zippers, right, which are
just too expensive to easily be attained. Or like when
that stop doesn't work and you go to zip up
at that jacket and all of a sudden, you're you're
holding that bull tab and the bridge right like a dummy. Yeah,
so there are things there. It's the worst you can
(37:35):
So there's actually little clamps that you can put on
a zipper broken zipper. I saw a video about this
that fit in between like the top two teeth on
either side, and then you just take some need on
those pliers and basically clamp it on the on the
inside and outside of the zipper fabric tape and that
will stop that slide. So if the slide ever comes off,
(37:57):
because this one of the stops broke off, you can
actually take um not at all drastic measures to fix
your zipper. Not me, man, I throw that jacket in
the garbage right to set it on fire force at
least all the methane inside. I do, and then I
sweep up the ashes, a urinate on them, and I
put it in the garbage. You turn it into a
(38:18):
six pack ring and throw it into the ocean. Now
that is a good tip actually, because there are ways
to darn socks and fix zippers. And we live in
a disposable society. So if you have a cheap zipper,
or you know, if you really like a jacket and
it has a terrible zipper, you could take it to
a place and they could probably put the zipper of
choice on there. But that's a lot of work. It
(38:39):
is a lot of work. There are things that you
can do yourself. You can also um if the zipper
slide is not doing a very good job any longer
of connecting the teeth. It's probably because the wedges inside
are a little loose, a little far apart. Again, needle
nose pliers are your best friend. Pinch the zippers from
the side and from the front and back. You're not
(39:00):
the zipper the slide mechanism. Sorry, and it will, um,
it will. It'll produce a tighter grip on the zipper
teeth from that point on. Again, basically you're breathing new
life into your zipper slide. Yeah, and uh failed to
mention that I'm also an outdoorsman and camper my whole life,
so aside from my bag fetish um sleeping bags intense.
(39:23):
That's a real big deal to have the right zipper
on those things. Yeah, that'll that. This the worst is
and especially on tense, the design such that, um, when
you're zipping it, the little flap gets zipped up in
the zipper. Yes, that's pretty bad. It's awful. It is,
um and that's something you can deal with yourself. But
(39:45):
zippers can also get stuck over time, especially if it's
a metal zipper and it's starting to corrode. They don't
like to slide nearly as much. There are little things,
little tip tips and tricks you can do to unstick
a zipper that's a little corroded. One of the first
things you can do is take a graphite pencil and
rub it on the teeth just below the zipper. And
(40:06):
graphites a dry lubricant and it'll help you unzip it
if the If the pencil doesn't work, try a little
bit of bar soap, dry bar soap, and if that
doesn't work, to spray a little squirt tiny stream of
windex on there and let it sit for a little
while and that should unzip your corroded or gunky zipper too. Yeah,
very good tips here from Uncle Josh. Right. So there's
(40:30):
some other things, Like we just basically described how zipper works.
What is zippers made out of um? Or what the
components are. There are some other things that they make
some little fancy dancy kind of a kouchruma to zippers um.
One of the things UH that comes in handy is, say,
like with a tent or something, when you want the
zipper to stay up, is a locking slide to where
(40:52):
it won't like you could pull the zipper apart and
it won't come apart because that slide won't move. It
only moves when you pull on the tab because it
lifts the locking mechanism as you slide up or down.
That's a good one. They also make magnetic zippers, which
is good for one handed zipping and unzipping. It's amazing.
I think so too. So let's talk a little bit
(41:12):
about how it's made and then we're going to bring
it home with a little manufacturing and medical action. Okay, Yeah,
so zippers, it depends on what it's made out of. Obviously,
with how it's made. UM a lot of zippers, you'll
see her metal um. They can be flat or they
can be profiled. They can be made of aluminium, nickel, brass, nickel,
(41:36):
free white brass, nickel, aluminum, brass, aminium right, nickelodeon. I'm
just reporting what I found on the internet, not making
fun of you. Uh. They can be die cast out
of zinc alloy directly onto that tape and you end
up just sewing that or gluing that onto the material.
(41:58):
And I imagined that might be a bit of a
more robust zipper. Yeah. The that that machine that Gideon's
sunback Um came up with is still The design principle
of it is still in use in some zipper manufacturers
where they take wire and just like pinch and pull
and clamp the zipper teeth out of wire onto this
(42:22):
zipper tape the fabric that's going to be put onto
the material that the zippers applied to you. That's right.
If you're working with plastic, there's basically two main ways.
And I saw really great how it's made. It's like
five minutes long, but it just explains it all um.
With plastic, there's a couple of reasons why you would
want plastic. You can actually manufacture plastic two more precise
(42:45):
design specifications if you're doing it right than metal zipper,
which means that it may actually provide a stronger grip.
It also doesn't corrode, although metal zippers are typically thought
of as is tougher over time, but they they they
will corrode. Plastic doesn't corrode. But if you're making plastic,
you can make it a couple of ways. One you
(43:05):
can make it basically just like a metal zippers made
by die casting it. And then another way is to
actually print it onto the tape, so like the whole
zipper to the exact length you want is just basically
formed and melted onto the fabric tape, and then there's
your zipperty. It can be super super solid. It's not
(43:29):
like a plastic zipper has to be cheap, no uh.
And then if you want a flexible plastic zipper, there's
something called a woven coil nylon zipper. And you've probably
seen this before, like on a dress that's meant to
have movement or something like that. It's a it's a
very thin um it's almost like a nest of of
(43:52):
nylon woven on either side, and the zipper just moves
up and down it. You've seen those before, I'm sure
I have. Don't play me bro. Most of my dresses
require movement, that's for sure. So I think we should
talk a little bit about y K k uh. If
you've ever looked down and seen a zipper, the chances
(44:12):
are you have if you've ever worn any article of
clothing and seeing y KK. That stands for Yoshida Kogyo
Kabushiki Kasha, which is UM a Japanese company that makes these.
Where else making Georgia. Yeah, that's like their biggest plan
is in making Yeah, and I knew it was in making.
(44:33):
Actually they make about five million zippers a day. Uh.
They started making zippers the Japanese company in four They
make theirs out of copper alloy, and they're really smart.
This is a company that UM. They build the machines
that make the zippers, they build the boxes and make
the boxes that they ship them in. So they have
(44:54):
a lot of control over the the pricing of their
supply chain, which is a great way to make a
lot more money than you would if you were outsourcing
that stuff right exactly. And so y k K kind
of came up. They started in the ninety four, but
by nineteen seventy they really started to take over the
(45:15):
zipper industry, so much so that prior to nineteen seventy
a little company called Talent, which you might know of
as the hookless fastener company, UM had seventy percent of
the market share. Seven out of all ten zippers that
you found in the world were made by Talent, And
by nineteen seventy one suddenly y KK had like of that,
(45:37):
and they were the big kid on the block for
decades until basically recently, when UM some Chinese firms started
to really come up to yeah, and the Chinese firms.
There used to be hundreds of these and they have
now sort of been consolidated down to like how many
do they have over there now? Yeah, but there's really
two big ones now, SPS and y KK. Right, and
(46:02):
a lot of these Chinese companies will be called things
like y q Q or y c C right obviously
trying to uh sort of rip off the y k
K company. And it's like any business where there are
some big, big players, there's fierce, fierce rivalries in the
zipper industry. Yumi said that when she was a kid,
her mom wouldn't buy something if the zipper wasn't y KK.
(46:24):
Sure you know it's quality zipper right there, made by
relatives of the Allman Brothers problem. That's right, that's where
the museum is so um. So that's why y KK
has found on most your zippers because of this company
that has been doing this for a very long time. Right,
It's pretty amazing. And I feel like, Chuck, we would
be remiss in talking about zippers if we also didn't
(46:48):
talk about, as you kind of teased earlier, Genitalia getting
caught in zippers, which is one of the big drawbacks
of zipper technology. Yeah, the very famous Signfelt episode when
he's remarking about his button flies. You want to do
your best Jerry Seinfeld. Here, this is the one place
on my wardrobe. I do not need sharp, inter locking
(47:10):
metal tee. Oh I think you had Seinfeld confused with
Silence of the Lambs. Which fun Buffalo Bill or Hannibal
elector Seinfeld of the Lambs. Oh wait, let me see
if I do it. Just do one place on my wardrobe.
I do not need sharpen or locking metal tea. Except
(47:32):
he would not have a zipper on his kimono. Was
that better or worse the second time? I don't know.
They were both great. I think worse. I'm going with
so Yeah, it's um. There are zipper injuries, mostly with
boys and men. That was a group in two thousand
thirteen and the urologists in San Francisco that's published an
(47:53):
actual study about zipper injuries in between two thousand two
in there were close to eighteen thousand men and boys
who had had zipper accidents um at the emergency room
with some variation of a something about mary type of injury. Yeah,
that's that's not that's just the ones that were bad
(48:16):
enough to go to the emergency room. Yeah, not the
ones that are like, ah, let me just put some
ointment on that, right, But that's exactly the treatment that
those guys got at the at the emergency room. Apparently
the treatment for it was described by a doctor, a
pediatric doctor, who said, I'm just gonna read this whole thing. Okay, Yes,
(48:36):
you want to just pour mineral oil all over the
patient's genitalia and the zipper be generous, that's the key.
This is pretty cheap stuff. Then let the patients sit
there for twenty or thirty minutes, pack him in a
room somewhere, and when you come back, the four skin
will have simply slipped out of that zipper, although in
some cases you may need a cotton swab to help
(48:58):
it along a bit. You know, my favorite part of
that whole quote, right, what it was when he's talking
about how inexpensive mineral oil is. Right, because you know,
mineral oil, you can just afford to just douse your
testicles with that stuff because it's pretty cheap. This isn't
like you know something, um Martin. Sure Kelly would invest
(49:21):
in what god farmer bro. Yeah, he would never buy
into a mineral oil company not profitable enough. I guarantee
that he's trying to get rich off of coronavirus. I
think he's in prison again. No, he's still He's probably
got his minions. Um, yeah, probably so. Yeah, you can
(49:41):
get your your junk zipped up in there. Uh, I
had I don't understand why a man would go commando
to me, the underwear is one of the biggest benefits
is to avoid zipper related injuries. But people do it,
and I just imagine you've got to be super careful. Yeah,
(50:02):
not just men too. There were five women in that
group of seventeen thousand, six hundred and sixteen emergency room visits.
Five women got caught in there. But for young boys, Chuck,
I thought this was the fact of the podcast. The
number one cause of penile injury was not zippers. Zippers
were second. Number one was getting smashed by the toilet lid.
(50:27):
How for real? Yeah, I mean you know they're they're
right there at lid height. I guess so I was
forgetting about the height difference. Okay, that's sad. You got
anything else, guys, I got nothing else? Well, that's zippers, everybody. Um,
we made it through Zippers is the new Sun. And
(50:50):
since I said zippers is the new Sun, it's time
for a listener. Male. Ah, this is from Kirsten and
we're gonna uh not exclusively, but I like reading these
emails about how we're helping folks out during this weird,
weird time of isolation, and this is this is one
of those. Hey, guys, thanks so much for the podcast.
(51:12):
My boyfriend Matt introduced me The Stuff You Should Know
a while back, and it has been a godsend for
our relationship. You see on car rides and road trips,
he always wants to listen to something that he will
learn from. I, on the other hand, am much more
interested in listening to something funny and lighthearted. Your podcast
strikes the perfect balance. Every time we listen to your show,
(51:32):
we always laugh together and we both learn a little
something too. Kirsten, we've been trying to explain that in
such a sixtinct way for twelve years now. Yeah, that
was really well done. Matt works in the I c
U and has been working long hours amid the coronavirus pandemic.
To pass the time alone at home, I've been listening
to a lot of Stuff You Should know. So I
want to thank you guys for keeping me company. And
(51:53):
if you wanted to give a shout out to Matt
and all of our amazing healthcare workers across the country,
that would be awesome and we certainly certainly want to
do that. Yeah, give it up, like it's eight pm
for all of the healthcare workers, including Matt. That's right.
That is uh, you know, beyond everything that's going on
with this there. It's not like everyone decided to take
(52:16):
a break from getting hurt and needing to go to
the emergency room. Have you been Have you been more
careful than usual just to make sure you don't, like
accidentally need to go. No, I can't think about that
stuff because that's when I will get hurt. I thought
about it climbing up a ladder my house, Well, I
don't know if I'd be doing a ladder work right now.
(52:37):
I had to we looked like there was a carpenter
b that made its way through our upper window, and
I had to look, well, I'm glad you were careful,
but yeah, it's um. That kind of just hit me
the other day that like, oh wait, there's still all
the other hospital stuff that has to happen right now. Yeah,
it's true. I have a friend who's a oh, our nurse.
(52:59):
I believe even she was saying that she'd been basically
furloughed for the moment because any elective surgery was um,
you know, put on hold, which is understandable, but she
was explaining that elective meant like your gall blighter needs
to be removed, or you have a tumor that needs
to be removed. It was considered elective at least temporarily.
(53:20):
I think that she's back at work again. But that's
how bad it was. It was just like, if it
doesn't have to do with COVID, no, just say no. Yeah,
I mean I was. I was just about to schedule
an eye surgery and uh, I'm definitely gonna wait a
while to do that. Yeah, yeah, I can imagine, I
can imagine. Um. Well that was great. Who is that from?
(53:43):
That was from Kirston and Matt. Yes, well, thanks a
lot Kirston, and thanks a lot, Matt, and thanks a
lot to everybody who's fighting the good fight on the
front lines of the health care battle right now, looking
out for all of us. Our hats are off to you.
If you want to get in touch with us like
Kirston Matt did. We'll get in touch of this via email.
Wrap your email up to thank you do on the bottom,
(54:04):
and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.