WEBVTT - Zippers! 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:13.560 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:17.720 I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh So. Historian 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.439 Robert Friedell wrote a book about zippers back in which 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:25.239 I recently read, and a line in the introduction to 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:28.560 that book really struck me, which was, while zippers are 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:33.040 used everywhere, they are almost never necessary. And I recoiled initially, 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:37.760 we need zippers everywhere, but really you could find an 0:00:37.760 --> 0:00:40.640 alternate way to do almost everything that a zipper does. 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:44.320 But they're so convenient and handy that, of course they 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:49.519 have become ubiquitous throughout everyone's wardrobes. But without trying to 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.440 throw anyone under the bus. That quote, it's kind of 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.120 how I feel about most write ups about the invention 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.000 of the zipper, because it's one of those things I 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.040 of course so a lot. So I have done a 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:02.200 lot of thinking about zippers and how they work and 0:01:02.280 --> 0:01:05.200 wonder where they came from. But if you look at 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:07.759 any right up, if you just you know, do an 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:11.320 Internet search and say who invented the zipper? You get 0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:15.240 to maybe three paragraphs, and it's really really glossing over 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:19.080 a lot of stuff. Um, there's a lot of story here, 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:21.600 So I thought today might be a good time to 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:25.679 delve into the oddly arduous creation of this simple thing 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:27.640 that we almost all have on our clothes and our 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:32.959 handbags and our luggage, etcetera. Zippers. Now that I think 0:01:33.000 --> 0:01:38.040 about it, they are in so many locations besides just 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:43.320 my jeans. Uh. In eighteen fifty one, Alias How, who 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.680 we talked about forever ago in Our Sewing Machine episode, 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:52.280 filed for a patent on an automatic continuous clothing closure. 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.960 If you look at the patent sketches, it really looks 0:01:56.000 --> 0:02:00.320 like a zipper, but it's also a little misleading. His vice, 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.000 which he described as a series of clasps united by 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.160 a connecting cord, was really more like a spiral drawstring 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:11.200 that was pre laced through clasps on either side of 0:02:11.240 --> 0:02:13.880 that opening that needed to be closed, So when you 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:16.400 pulled on the draw string, it pulled the two sides 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.560 together and closed it up. If you've ever seen a 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.480 spiral laced corset, it's kind of the same idea, but 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.880 on a smaller scale. You may recall that at one 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.160 point in his career, Elias How traveled to England to 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:33.880 make machines specifically intended for corset making. That was just 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:36.560 a few years before he filed this patent, so it's 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.839 possible that he was inspired by that connection. We don't 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:43.519 really know how didn't pursue the development of this though, 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.080 because he became too busy working on sewing machines. But 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.520 to really get into zippers in their origins, we have 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:53.239 to talk about a few other men, and the first 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:57.200 of those is Whitcomb L. Judson, who was born in Chicago, Illinois, 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:02.360 on Marche. We don't have a whole lot of details 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:05.280 about his personal life. We have virtually none about his youth. 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.440 We know that while he was still a teenager, he 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:10.760 enlisted with the Union Army and he was part of 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.400 the Illinois Infantry Regiment in the US Civil War. He 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.920 earned an undergraduate degree at Knox College, a liberal arts 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:22.720 college in Galsburg, Illinois, and his details from there are 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:27.000 pretty sparse until he appears in a Minneapolis, Minnesota directory 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:30.720 in eighteen eighty six. And in that directory, his profession 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.280 is simply listed as traveling agent i e. Like a 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:38.520 traveling salesman, with no indication as to who his employer was. 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.680 His story can be pieced together a bit through his 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:46.880 business relationship with another man, Harry Earl. In Earl started 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:51.440 his own company, Earl Manufacturing Company, and Whitcomb was an employee, 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.680 working initially as a salesman. Before founding that company, Harry 0:03:55.680 --> 0:03:59.000 Earl had worked for Pitts Agricultural Works, so it's been 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:02.720 theorized that's where the two men met as employees. In 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:05.920 any case, once he was working for Harry Earle, Whitcomb 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.440 Judson started working not just on sales but on inventions, 0:04:10.240 --> 0:04:13.760 and his first big effort in invention was in designing 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:17.279 a pneumatic street railway. He actually received a total of 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:20.400 fourteen patents related to the project over the course of 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:24.760 just a few years. But he didn't revolutionize urban to 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.320 suburban transportation as he had hoped because the system just 0:04:28.360 --> 0:04:30.800 didn't really work that well, and by the time he 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.400 did start to really make progress on it, electric lines 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.560 had surpassed what he had hoped to do. But that 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.560 whole effort, including starting a company called Judson Pneumatic Street 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:45.040 Railway Company, gave him a lot of experience in the 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.320 ins and outs of trying to innovate in a technological space. 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:53.400 In Whitcomb Judson invented an item called a clasp blocker. 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.680 This was intended to be used in shoots, although Judson 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.159 was clear that it could be applied so many things 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:04.159 that needed closures, including mail bags and gloves. This was 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:06.760 essentially a set of hooks and eyes that had a 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.400 slider that moved the hooks into position to fasten them, 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.040 although exactly how this whole thing is supposed to have 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:16.560 worked as a little unclear. The description in the patent 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:22.039 mentions clasps which have quote underreaching and overlapping projections or 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:25.440 lips at their forward ends, which prevent the engagement or 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:30.000 disengagement of the hook portions of the clasps, except when 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.520 thrown upward, so that the parts stand at an angle 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.360 to each other of about ninety degrees. I can't really 0:05:37.440 --> 0:05:42.240 visualize what that means. A little confusing even looking at diagrams, 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:47.640 I was like, would come what. It was listed in 0:05:47.760 --> 0:05:51.080 Scientific American as one of the patents issued on August 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.479 twenty nine, and it was actually two patents because Judson 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:58.200 had refined his idea and submitted a second patent application 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.240 before the first one was granted, But the two patents 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.480 ended up being issued on the same day. We don't 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.919 know what sparked this idea or what inspired his design. 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:11.120 He had moved to Chicago at this time from New York, 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:13.440 where he and Earl had been working on the pneumatic 0:06:13.520 --> 0:06:17.200 travel system. We also don't know why he moved. The 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.680 two men remained close friends and business associates. Though. Yeah, 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.320 they had seemed so all in on trying to connect 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:26.240 like the more populated parts of New York to more 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:29.640 rural parts with this travel thing, and then as I 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.839 think they realized it wasn't gonna happen, Whitcomb moved on. Uh. 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:35.880 He did take his fastener to the World's Fair in 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.440 Chicago that year to show it to the world. It 0:06:39.520 --> 0:06:41.680 did not really get a lot of buzz there, but 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:45.279 Whitcomb Judson felt that there was potential for his fastener, 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:49.280 and in four he and Harry Earl founded the Universal 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:54.200 Fastener Company along with several investors. Just prior to the 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:58.440 company being officially founded, Judson filed two more patent applications 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:02.240 for his fastener, one for a more effective slider and 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:04.919 one for the fasteners on each side of the closure. 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.000 Prior to this, the teeth of the fastener were items 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:12.200 that were not permanently affixed to the item being closed. 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:16.120 They were individual pieces that slid kind of through the buttonholes. 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.360 But this new patent called for permanently attached clasps and 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:22.840 offered a number of ways that they might work to 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:27.120 fit together, including alternating from side to side as they 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:31.000 fit together with what Judson called pin piles and sockets. 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:34.280 This is starting to sound a lot more like a zipper. 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:40.480 In the first manufacture efforts of Universal Fastener Company were 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:44.600 made in a workshop owned by the Bride and Horseshoe Company. 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:48.960 The first working version and working goes in air quotes 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.000 because it apparently did not work, at least not consistently. 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.800 First working versions were made affixed to mailbags. If the 0:07:56.840 --> 0:07:59.440 company could get a government contract, it could fund a 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.920 larger effort to move into the home consumer goods market. 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:07.320 The Postal Service did place an order for twenty bags 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:11.200 that had Dunson's closure. There were never any additional orders 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:15.120 placed after that, though. That's like the saddest trombone part 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:17.040 of this story for me. They had to have felt 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:19.600 so excited that they had a government order and then 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:23.880 it was like, no, no thanks, that's now these are 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:26.840 these are done so they're not really working for us. 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:31.520 As Universal Fastener struggled, Harry Earle struck a deal for 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.679 the company to be acquired by the Allyria Fastener Company 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:39.120 in Allria, Ohio. But Wickham Judson had reached a plateau 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:42.080 where his proclivities as an inventor couldn't keep up with 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:46.319 the knowledge that he needed to actually manufacture these designs, 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:50.760 and things went pretty badly. The entire Alliria company ended 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.520 up being liquidated in nineteen o one, and at that 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:57.360 point Harry Earle gained the rights to the Universal Fastener patents, 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.439 so Earle once again found investor and launched the Fastener 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:06.680 Manufacturing and Machine Company. This new iteration of their business venture, 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:10.760 which was based in New Jersey, aggressively advertised the merits 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.720 of Judson's closure invention, which they simply called the Fastener. 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.920 They advertised it in print and touted a wider variety 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:22.160 of uses than had even been suggested before. They said 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:25.360 this could go on everything from corsets to leggings, two shoes, 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.360 and boots. In nineteen o four, the company re orged 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:33.520 under the name Automatic Hook and Eye Company. This reflected 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.600 another change in the design of the fastener, which then 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:40.280 went by the new name of the Cecurity Fastener. That's 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.000 a sea dash c U r I t y spelling, 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:47.679 which is an awkward brand name in my opinion. At 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:51.600 this point, the advertising leaned into the women's clothing market, 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.640 and most of the print material focused on how much 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:58.079 easier it was going to be to fasten skirt plackets. 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:01.800 That seems like they were onto something, and they were, 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:04.400 But the fastener still needed some work, and we will 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:06.920 talk about its problems after we paused for a quick 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:20.560 sponsor break. While things were moving forward for Judson's invention, 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:25.760 there were still some pretty obvious problems. The security fasteners 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:30.120 sometimes jammed up. Also, so ASTs needed instructions on how 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.960 to stitch them into garments, and worst of all, in 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.400 my opinion, if you wanted to launder the garment, you 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:40.359 had to remove the fastener, wash it, and then reinstall 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:44.240 that fastener once the skirt or dress was clean, because 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:46.760 while they did have a coating, they were still prone 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:51.040 to rust. Additionally, these fasteners were expensive. They went to 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.000 market at thirty five cents at a time when a 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:57.360 basic skirt was about seventy seven cents. In the Sears 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:02.280 Robot catalog, dressmakers and resellers could get bulk discounts, but 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:06.040 even so, a closure for a garment costing one quarter 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:08.560 to one half of the value of the overall article 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.600 of clothing, it was just a lot like For comparison, 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:13.680 that would be like purchasing a pair of button fly 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.120 jeans today for eighty dollars and then having a company 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.960 tell you that you're already perfectly functioning garment would cost 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:25.320 another thirty dollars to modernize to a new closure. Most 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.000 people would skip that offer, and in the early nine 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:33.120 hundreds most people did just that. By nine six, Harry 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:37.240 Earle had left the company Whitcom. Judson soon extricated himself 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.240 from the business as well. These two men had been 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:43.760 trying to manufacture and market Judson's bastener for more than 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.720 a decade. At that point, with several restarts, it was 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:51.319 just not happening. Judson had also moved on creatively to 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:55.280 working on inventions related to the new technology of automobiles. 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.760 He was working on an early combustion engine and had 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.440 decided to move to miss Schigan to be near his son. 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:06.560 Skirt closures were just no longer holding his attention. The 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.640 automatic hook and eye company continued without the two men 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.800 who had catalyzed its founding, though, and that same year 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.920 that they left, a new figure entered the picture who 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.960 was key to the development of the zipper, and that 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:23.880 was Gideon Sundback Otto Friedrich. Gideon Sundback was born in 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:30.120 small On, Sweden on a Details about his early life 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.959 are a little sparse. We know he studied engineering at 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.319 bing In and received his degree in nineteen o three. 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:39.640 Once you finished schooling, he moved briefly to Germany before 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:41.840 deciding to head to the US. And he was in 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.600 a good position to do so. The family had money, 0:12:44.679 --> 0:12:46.880 so moving to a new country wasn't really that much 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:49.200 of a gamble. Yeah. One of the books that I 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.319 read was like, sometimes you will see people acting like 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.320 this is you know, the classic like poor immigrant story 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:57.880 trying to find a new life, and it's like, No, 0:12:58.040 --> 0:12:59.920 he was a wealthy kid who thought like, oh, I 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.800 can go make my fortune here in this other place. 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.680 Not quite the same. He arrived in North American nineteen 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:09.520 o five and headed for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:14.320 employed as a tracer at Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:16.800 That job is exactly what it sounds like he was 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:21.040 tracing engineering drawings and schematics to make copies, but he 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.040 was soon promoted to a draftsman position, and he worked 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:27.400 in that role for about a year. Through various contacts, 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:31.040 someone mentioned sun Back to Frank Russell in nineteen o six. 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:34.360 At the time, Russell was the president of Automatic Hook 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:38.160 and Eye Company. The company executive had realized that what 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.520 they needed to make the security fastener really work in 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.080 a way that was reliable and affordable was an engineer, 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:50.440 and so Automatic recruited Sunback. Reading about this offer and move, 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:52.920 it seems almost like people who had looked at Sunback's 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:56.439 qualifications and his job at Westinghouse or left scratching their 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.440 heads about why they would take a position at this 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.960 flown during company in Hoboken with a fundamentally flawed product 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.560 background made that kind of a question mark decision. Uh 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:11.600 he did take the job, though possibly just for the challenge. 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.000 There's also been speculation that part of that decision for 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.640 the move was because he had met a young woman 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:21.160 named Elvira Aaronson on his first visit to Hoboken when 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.640 he toured the factory, and that he had been quite 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:27.640 taken with her. And those two did eventually marry, and 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.800 we know that because her father was involved in Automatic 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:35.040 as an executive. Elvira Aaronson was around the company a lot. 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:37.920 She actually worked in the factory and she sometimes modeled 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:42.120 garments that the company's closures were sewn into. And these 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:45.400 two started seeing each other almost immediately after. Sundback moved 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:49.200 to New Jersey, and he had Elvira, who he called Vira, 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.320 help him perfect his English, which was by all accounts 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:54.560 already quite good. There's some people that were like, you 0:14:54.600 --> 0:14:58.160 don't actually need English lessons. So if he had been 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:00.400 drawn to the job because of the potential to spend 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:04.360 time with her, that absolutely worked out. But the reasoning 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.280 for his move from Westinghouse is still speculation. We really 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:09.240 don't know if he moved to be with her or not. 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:13.160 The timing of his hire meant that Sunback was joining 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.680 Automatic hook and Eye just as Harry Earl and Whitcomb 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.640 Judson were leaving. There was a brief period of overlap. 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.400 Gideon later described Whitcomb as a man who invented something 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:27.960 every night, but soon he was gone and Sunback settled 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.720 in to try to understand Judson's invention and where it 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:37.000 was going wrong, and he quickly identified a few issues. One, 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.720 when a woman was wearing a skirt with a security 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.080 closure on it, the fastener would often pop open if 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.880 she moved in a way that applied any tension across it. 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.520 He realized that if just one of the interlocking pieces 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:53.200 was moved askew through pretty much more normal motion of 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:56.960 the wearer, the whole thing would come undone. So obviously 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:02.280 not good at all. It does the work getting Him's 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:05.280 first pass at a solution was something he called a 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:09.080 placo fastener. This was more flexible, so that a person 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:11.760 could bend or twist in a normal day to day 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.960 way without popping the whole thing apart. This one's a 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.360 market in nineteen o eight. But the more flexible eyes 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:22.120 that sun Back had designed were also bulkier. They could 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:26.160 be rendered entirely useless forever if any fabric got caught 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:28.480 in them, and then from a production standpoint, they were 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.360 expensive in part because once a placao had come off 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:34.720 the production line, workers had to open and close it 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.800 repeatedly to primeate. So like wear down any ridges that 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:43.000 would cause it to stick. It's not very efficient process. No, 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.440 that's a lot of man hours just to get one 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:49.840 function enclosure out the door. Still, they marketed the heck 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.440 out of that Placau fastener, and one of the big 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.080 points in the sales pitch was that at last, a 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:57.400 lady could fasten her garments at the back of the 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:02.240 waist securely with no help, but they needed help sewing 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.560 them into clothes. It seemed that everyone had trouble with 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:09.679 that step. Complaints became so frequent that the company started 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:13.600 offering customers the option to send their garments in with 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:16.560 their Placo fastener, which would then be stitched in at 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.439 the factory and then sent back to that customer ready 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:24.840 to wear. That seems like a huge money pit. Now 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.600 we need a sewing division to fix all these problems. 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.879 The ongoing issues once again led to financial problems for 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:36.280 American Hook and I, and Sunback found himself not only 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:40.280 negotiating with creditors on behalf the company, but also expanding 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.080 their product line and taking side projects just to keep 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.600 cash coming in. Things became bad enough that the company 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.600 could not afford to pay Sunback and instead gave him 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:52.399 all the patent rights to the various fasteners that the 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.040 company had. This is another thing that leaves a lot 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.119 of people going why was this man who had an 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.560 engineering degree and could have gone almost anywhere he wanted 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:06.200 so invested in this company that he would literally take 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.280 side jobs and be like, yeah, I'll do this engineering 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:12.600 as a freelance contractor for you so that I can 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.160 give that money to my boss. Like it's a little weird. 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.000 But by nineteen o nine, sunback, it turned out, probably 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:23.240 because of that, was really running the company and he 0:18:23.359 --> 0:18:26.480 did briefly manage to turn around the money situation there. 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.800 He also sought to expand the company into international markets. 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:34.600 He and his at this point father in law, Peter Aaronson, 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.520 made a move to sell their fasteners in France as 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.959 Lafirm toute American or American Clothes all but that effort 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:45.280 had sputtered out by nine twelve. In the time that 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.879 the French sales efforts were happening, Gideon, who had married 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:52.199 Elvira Errandson in nineteen o nine, welcomed a child. This 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.200 was a daughter named Ruth Margitte. But though they should 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.680 have been joyous, this was not a happy occasion. Elvira 0:18:59.800 --> 0:19:04.240 die not long after Ruth's birth, and Gideon was just devastated, 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.399 so much so that he could not envision himself raising 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:11.560 a child. When Elvira died that aaronsons were in Europe 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.639 and Gideon had no personal support system and hobookens, so 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.960 Ruth was sent to Sweden, where Sunback's mother took care 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.399 of her throughout her childhood. Yeah, there's not a lot 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.080 of information on their relationship. It appears they did not 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.320 really reunite until she was at least a teenager, and 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.520 then he was left kind of explaining like, no, I 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:36.480 was grieving not a lot beyond that of what happened 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.000 with them. Yeah, I read a thing recently about like 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:43.120 how common this has been in points in history, especially 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:46.679 when like a mother dies with an infant and the 0:19:46.760 --> 0:19:51.080 father is totally at a loss for what to do, 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:55.000 like particularly in this era, and so a different person 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:58.400 entirely would wind up raising the child. Yeah. I suspect 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.680 had Elvira's parents still ben in New Jersey and not 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:06.000 working overseas, that would have Benna a means to keep 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:08.200 the family a little closer together, but it just wasn't. 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.639 But by the time of Elvira's death and Ruth's birth, 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:15.439 wickcom Judson had also died. He had moved as planned 0:20:15.440 --> 0:20:18.200 to Muskegan, Michigan, and he died there on December seven, 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:21.399 nine nine, at the age of sixty three, so he 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:24.400 never got to see the success that eventually came from 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:28.040 other inventors building on his idea. His work in the 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.880 early automotive industry, however, became very profitable, and that ensured 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:34.320 that his son, who carried on his father's work in 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:38.320 that field, became very very wealthy. In the years that 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.560 Sunback had been with American Hook and I, other inventors 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:44.359 had gotten the idea that they could improve on Judson's 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:48.639 design and patent their own slide fastener. A woman named 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:51.560 Ida Josephine Calhoun had come up with a design that 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:54.560 was very similar to Judson's, but had a slider that 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.199 separated into two parts to help with some of the 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:01.119 jamning problems. Frank camp Field had come up with a 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.800 slide fastener that eliminated hooks and eyes and instead used 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:07.960 a ball in socket closure. Yeah. Those were both interesting 0:21:08.080 --> 0:21:10.639 didn't ever go to market. But the first version of 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:14.920 the closure that came closest to Sundbacks, and which led 0:21:14.960 --> 0:21:17.880 to some legal issues down the road, was one designed 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.119 by a woman from Zurich, Switzerland named Katerina kun Moose. 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:25.080 She developed her fastener with a partner named en Reforster. 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.800 Kun Moose and Forrester got patents for their design in 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:33.320 Great Britain, France, and Germany. But though the European developed 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:36.320 closure worked and was pretty darn close to what we'd 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:39.960 easily recognized as a zipper today, it never went into 0:21:40.000 --> 0:21:43.800 production and those patents were abandoned. We'll talk about the 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.400 breakthrough that led to the modern zipper after we paused 0:21:47.400 --> 0:21:49.240 for a quick word from the sponsors that keep the 0:21:49.280 --> 0:22:02.560 show going. While still leaving his wife, Sundback worked on 0:22:02.760 --> 0:22:06.840 a new idea which involved small interlocking teeth and was 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:10.480 very much what we would recognize as a zipper. This 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:13.879 change in design direction had been catalyzed by a deep 0:22:13.920 --> 0:22:17.280 frustration that he had experienced with trying to make the 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:21.920 security fastener and its various problems actually work. He wrote 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:24.440 of this shift quote, I was fed up with hooks 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.960 and eyes, rusting metal and everything pertaining to the fastener, 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.360 the complaints, as far as our salesmen were concerned. We're 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.840 here's a scratchy fastener. These hooks are awfully rough and rusted. 0:22:35.480 --> 0:22:38.639 I decided to turn in an entirely different direction and 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:41.199 away from hooks and eyes and get away from the 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:45.719 metallic appearance, make something attractive to the wearer, and starting 0:22:45.720 --> 0:22:47.960 in nineteen twelve he started to do a lot more 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:51.520 experimenting with the design. In October of that year he 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:55.399 applied for a new patent, and this version used a 0:22:55.400 --> 0:22:59.880 completely different approach. One side had a row of clamp 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.240 and the other side had a raised cord, so when 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.920 the slider moved up, it closed the clamps onto the cord, 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.159 and the slider moved down, it opened the clamps and 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.800 the cord edge was released. This worked a lot better 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.840 than any of the previous designs that Judson or sun 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:19.720 Back had worked on. It was consistent, it was quiet, 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:23.119 it sure looked a lot nicer than the security fastener, 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.080 and it was flexible, with no tendency to pop open 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:29.399 when a wearer moved around. Sun Back called it the 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:33.119 hookless fastener. Not super catchy, but it also conveyed that 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:36.560 a main concern about previous fasteners was out of the picture. 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:42.359 There was, however, a problem, or more accurately too one. 0:23:42.480 --> 0:23:45.280 The factory was back in financial hot water. It had 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:49.439 to shut down completely temporarily because operational funds for it 0:23:49.520 --> 0:23:52.800 just did not exist, and sun Back took advantage of 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:55.680 the down time to test and refined the hookless fastener 0:23:56.440 --> 0:24:00.520 that actually revealed the second problem. The cording side of 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:02.919 it wore out way too fast for it to be 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:06.760 a reliable closure. The cotton used in the courting that 0:24:06.920 --> 0:24:08.879