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One of the best-known inventions of the 19th century was the Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure, which was made by the inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe, and was patented in 1851. Don't be surprised if you've never heard of it. The device was never marketed under that catchy name. Forty-four years later, Whitcomb Judson, already a successful inventor with a dozen patents to his name, marketed a slightly different version, the “Clasp Locker Device.” Judson and his business partner, Lewis Walker, attached the invention to their boots and took it to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.
Twenty-one million people from all parts of the globe came to that World’s Fair to view the latest scientific wonders. They were introduced to the world's very first electric Ferris machine and the eye-bugging coochie-coochie dancer Little Egypt. Judson and Walker did not sell much of their product.
However, fifteen years later, Swedish engineer Gideon Sundback made the invention smaller, lighter, and more reliable. It was almost doomed by its name again. The Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure/Clasp Locking Device was re-christened with the trendy appellation “The Hookless Fastener.” Despite its less than gripping name, the new and improved fastener began to sell. It was attached to purses and other items, was sold to the Army, and was applied to the clothing and gear of United States soldiers in World War I. Strange as it seems now, the new invention came with instructions. The Army's "Instruction Manual on the Use and Maintenance of the Hookless Fastener" is likely a collector's item.
The invention began to catch on. The firm Kynoch from Birmingham in Great Britain started to produce “The Ready Fastener” in 1919, but real fame came at the 1924 Wembley exhibition. The fastener was more reliable by this time and didn't jam or pull apart after a few uses. Hitherto regarded as potentially embarrassing and immodest, it was used by Madame Schiaparelli, a Paris fashion designer.
The story goes that Mr. B.F. Goodrich of the B.F. Goodrich Company coined the term “zipper” while marketing the fasteners on his galoshes for the sound made when the fastener slid its way along the parallel metal tracks. It was only later that the word came into general use for the fastener itself. (Zip fastener was never a trade name.)
Today, zippers come in all shapes, sizes, and materials. There are standard close, double-ended bottom stops, cut and slider, left-side box open-end (mostly for the USA market), right-side box open-end (standard open-end), "R" type (one side top stop and another side bottom stop, but with two sliders tail to tail), "O" type (both ends bottom stops with two sliders head to head), "X" type (both ends top stops with two sliders tail to tail), and many others.
Zippers are made with nylon, plastic, brass, nickel, stainless steel, and aluminum. Plastic zipper teeth (Perlon) are shaped rather differently than metal fastener teeth. The chains do not consist of individual teeth but rather of loops formed by a spiral coil. This kind of fastener has the advantage that, because of the resilient properties of plastic, it's not destroyed by tearing it open. Nylon zippers are mostly used for lighter, more decorative work. And the different types of metals each demand a slightly different tooth design. In addition to the types of zip fasteners described above, there are many others, all of which operate on similar principles; they differ only in the particular form of the teeth employed. Zippers are painted, shellacked, oiled, artfully hidden, and artfully displayed. They're as much part of our life as buttons, and as individual.
The word “zip” has proliferated and metamorphosed almost as much as the item itself. The first recorded use is from the middle of last century when it referred to the noise made by some small, fast-moving object or to a tearing sound.
Since then, phrases like zip lock (and the trade name Ziploc) and zip gun have entered the language. A well-known piece of archiving software is called PKZIP, which is in reference to the act of zipping up files into a single, compressed unit for storage. We use the term “zipping around” to mean dashing madly and the U.S. colloquial usage meaning zero. (The word “nothing” may be a separate invention on the model of zilch.) Incidentally, “zipper” still tends to be an American word; in Britain, “zip” is more common.
The word has also entered the lists in defense of political correctness. The British Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Eastbourne agreed to introduce zipping for the European Parliament elections in 1999, which were run using proportional representation for the first time in Britain. Zipping is now apparently a technique of alternating male and female candidates on lists to increase the number of women elected, which is certainly a reference to the alternating teeth of the halves of a zipper.
Inventors may want to take note: first, think of a good name, and then invent something to go with it. It's a perfect recipe for success.
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