Who Invented the Zipper?
Whitcomb L. Judson invented the zipper and YKK is the Japanese company that makes them. Whitcomb L. Judson was a lover of gadgets and machines and the idea for his “clasp locker” came from when a friend had a stiff back from trying to fasten his shoes. Judson’s clasp locker was used mostly on mailbags, tobacco pouches and shoes. However, his design, like most first inventions needed to be fine-tuned. A more practical version came on the scene in 1913 when a Swedish-born engineer, Gideon Sundback revised Judson’s idea and made his with metal teeth instead of a hook and eye design. In 1917, Sundback patented his “separable fastener.” The name changed again when the B. F. Goodrich Co. used it in rubber boots, galoshes, and called it the “zipper” because the boots could be fastened with one hand. The 1940s brought about research in Europe of the coil zipper design. The first design was of interlocking brass coils. However, since they could be permanently bent out of shape, making the zippe
The true zipper was the product of a series of incremental improvements over more than twenty years, by inventors and engineers associated with a sequence of companies that were the progenitors of Talon, Inc. This process began with a version called the “clasp locker”, invented by Whitcomb L. Judson of Chicago (previously of Minneapolis and New York City), and for which a patent (No. 504,038 ) was first applied on Nov. 7, 1891. It culminated in 1914 with Gideon Sundback’s invention of the “Hookless Fastener No. 2”, the first version of the zipper without any major design flaws and essentially indistinguishable from modern zippers. In 1917 a Swiss inventor, Mathieu Burri, invented a better version, but it got rejected because of a previous patent.
Many inventors had a hand in creating this wondrously simple contraption which is now in such common use today. The first patent for a device using an “automatic, continuous clothing closure” was submitted in 1851 by Elias Howe, the creator of the sewing machine. The sewing machine was such a success; however, that Howe did not follow up on his clothing closure patent. In 1893, Whitcomb L. Judson introduced and marketed a “clasp locker” which was similar to Howe’s patent. Judson had originally designed the clasp locker as a way to help a friend who had difficulty tying his shoes due to his bad back. Because Judson marketed his product, he is credited with the invention of the zipper, despite his patent not containing the actual word “zipper.” Judson partnered with several people including Harry Earle, Lewis Walker and a businessman named Colonel Lewis Walker, and opened the Universal Fastener Company to produce his new product. His invention worked as a slide fastener, which was design
Swedish-born (who later immigrated to Canada), Gideon Sundback, an electrical engineer, was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company. Good design skills and a marriage to the plant-manager’s daughter Elvira Aronson led Sundback to the position of head designer at Universal. He was responsible for improving the far from perfect ‘Judson C-curity Fastener.’ Unfortunately, Sundback’s wife died in 1911. The grieving husband busied himself at the design table and by December of 1913, he had designed the modern zipper.
