Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Examine The Zipper

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

I’m guessing that almost everyone listening to this podcast has, within the last day, used a zipper. They are ubiquitous at this point and most people have never given them much thought. Yet, its invention was a rather inspired leap of creativity and required the development of several other technologies before it could even become a thing. Learn more about the zipper, how it was invented and how it is used today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm guessing that almost everyone listening to this podcast has, within the last 24 hours, used a zipper. They're ubiquitous at this point, and most people have never given them much thought. Yet its invention was a rather inspired leap of creativity and required the development of several other technologies before it could even become a thing. Learn more about the zipper and how it was invented and how it's used today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Scotty Vest. I've told you before about how Scotty Vest has lots of pockets to help you carry all of your gear. And that's true. It's what they're best known for. However, they have many clothing innovations beyond just pockets. Their patented technology-enabled clothing, or tech, includes conduits in their clothes which allows for a personal area network of hidden cables throughout their garments,

which are designed for routing charging cords from pocket to pocket, or headphones up to the collar for easy access. I've been wearing Scotty Vest clothing for years, and I still wear their stuff every single day. You can get 15% off your next order by going to ScottyVest.com and using coupon code, everything everywhere, all one word at checkout. Once again, that's scottyvest.com. The zipper is an odd invention in that it really didn't solve a problem per se. It's a fastening device, and we already had fastening devices for clothing before the invention of the zipper.

There were buttons, hooks, and ribbons, and they all did basically the same thing that zippers do. Moreover, the zipper really couldn't have been invented any earlier than it was. As you'll see, an ancient Chinese or Roman zipper really wasn't something that could have happened given the state of technology at the time. The very first attempt at creating something close to a zipper was invented by American Elijah Howe in 1851. Hao is better known as being the inventor of the lock stitch sewing machine, which was the precursor to the modern sewing machine. His patent for the zipper was for an automatic continuous clothing closure. It was the first real attempt at what we would now call a zipper. However, how sewing machines were so successful that he never bothered to pursue his clothing closure patent.

He died a multimillionaire, but isn't credited with being the father of the zipper. His invention didn't have teeth and was probably closer to something like the seal on a Ziplock bag than it was a modern zipper. The person who is usually credited with inventing the zipper is Whitcomb Judson. Like how, Judson had many other patents. However, unlike how none of his other inventions really made him any money. Judson called his device the clasp locker, and it used a hook and eye system which was different from the modern zipper, which uses interlocking teeth, with a guide that would interlock the two sides. He applied for the patent in 1891, and its original intent was to be used with boots and shoes. He also noted in the patent application that it could be used for, quote, generally wherever it is desired to detachably connect

a pair of adjacent flexible parts, unquote. Even before his patent was approved, he submitted another patent, which was far closer to what we know today as a zipper. His description of the device, as he put it in the patent application, was as follows. Quote, each link of each chain is provided both with a male and female coupling part, and when the chains are coupled together, the female part of each link on one chain is engaged by the male part of the link on the other chain, unquote. Basically, pretty close to the modern zipper.

In 1893, Jutson created the Universal Fassener Company in Chicago, which was the first company dedicated to the production of zippers. Except they weren't yet called zippers. Before, I said that the ancient Chinese and Romans couldn't have developed the zipper. The reason had to do with manufacturing techniques. Zippers require very precisely manufactured parts that are identical and small. The techniques used to mass-produce such parts didn't exist until the 19th century. To produce a zipper before these techniques were developed would have required a master clockmaker or a metal smith,

and even then they would have had to have crafted each piece by hand. Judson's fastener was given many awards, but it never really caught on during his lifetime. His universal fastener company eventually moved to New Jersey, and then to Meadville, Pennsylvania, where they changed their name to the Talon Company. more on them in a bit. If Whitcomb Judson was the father of the zipper, then a talent employed by the name of Gideon's sunback really refined the product.

He increased the number of teeth per inch, improved the locking mechanism, created a better machine for producing teeth, and also personally got the license to create the device outside of the United States. The word zipper finally entered the lexicon in 1923. The rubber company B.F. Goodrich introduced a pair of rubber boots

with the name zipper. The name was originally used for the brand of boot, but the word eventually became associated with the fastening mechanism instead. In the 1920s, zippers still weren't widely used. Their primary use was on shoes and tobacco pouches. It wasn't until 1925 that a zipper was first used on a jacket. Zipper usage on clothing didn't really take off until 1937, when French fashion designers discovered the zipper

and began using it as the fly on men's trousers. Leveyes didn't come out with their first pair of blue jeans with a zipper until 1947. Zippers are not and have never been something that clothing manufacturers created themselves. It's a metallic product that requires specialized machinery. Third-party manufacturers have always specialized in zippers ever since the Universal Fastener Company was created. That company, which eventually became the Talon Company, was by far the largest zipper manufacturer until the 1960s. 70% of zippers used in the United States

were manufactured by Talon. However, like many market leaders, they were lazy and sloppy. They had high prices, and they didn't innovate. Moreover, as the textile industry began moving overseas, Talon kept focusing on the U.S. market. The company which took over their market dominance

is one whose initials you might have seen on your zipper. YKK. YKK stands for Yoshida, Kogio, Kabushiki Gaisha, which basically means the Yoshida manufacturing company. Today they simply go by YKK. YKK really had their act together and competed against talent at almost every level. They invested in their own manufacturing equipment. In fact, they built their own equipment.

They innovated in manufacturing processes and design. They also opened manufacturing facilities around the world, including the United States. When NASA needed zippers for their spacesuits for the Apollo program, they went with the Japanese YKK rather than the American Tallen Corporation. By the 1970s, they were making a superior product to Tallon at a cheaper price. YKK grew to be the global leader in Zippers by the 1980s, and today, Tallon's percentage of the global market is in the low single digits. The threat to YKK today is primarily coming from China.

There are a bunch of very small companies which are competing with YKK, on price. Many of them have names like YQQ or YCC and try to leach off the YKK brand. Today you can find zippers in a dizzying array of sizes, colors, and materials. They are in almost everything which requires joining cloth or flexible materials. In 2017, the above-mentioned Talon Corporation created the world's longest zipper, which was 3.1 miles long. There are still innovations being made in the world of zippers. Under Armour for example has developed a zipper where the two sides at the bottom are joined by a magnet, making it easier to zip up a jacket using only a single hand.

The zipper is an incredible invention that is simple and ubiquitous. You can appreciate how such a simple device is a wonder of engineering the next time you examine your zipper. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. I just want to give a big thanks to everyone who has subscribed and been supporting the show. I've now done over 300 episodes, and sometime in the next few days, I'll be celebrating a half a million downloads since I've launched the show. If you know someone who's a curious person and loves to learn, then please share the show with them. We all know such people who might work in your office or maybe it's someone you're in touch with online.

The more people who listen, the more people who can learn, and the easier it's going to be for me to continue to provide you this content.