In reality, the students have chosen a topic with a fantastic history. It may be hard to believe, but anyone who had seen a zipper during its first thirty years of existence would have been certain that the product was headed straight for obscurity. Yes, the zipper was once a complete and utter failure.
So, where did this great invention come from?
It turns out that the zipper was patented way back on August 29, 1893 (remember that date-it may show up on the exam I’m giving you next week), by a guy named Whitcomb Judson, a Chicago mechanical engineer who received nearly thirty other patents in his lifetime. It basically was a bunch of hooks that were mechanically locked in place by a removable slide. 1 should mention here that Judson only intended the device to fasten shoes. (Which just happens to be one of the very few places that we rarely use zippers today.) Also, it was not called a zipper; it was simply referred to as the fastener (quite catchy, huh?).
There was one big problem with the zipper-excuse me, the fastener-it just didn’t work. Not only did it not work, no one wanted it, either. With a potential audience of 20 million people, Judson decided to display it at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. With an audience of that size, one would think that he was sure to make a killing.
So, how many did he sell? Was it a hundred thousand? A million?
No, just twenty. Certainly not enough to retire on. All twenty fasteners went to the U.S. Postal Service to close its mailbags. Since it never ordered another batch from Judson, it is safe to assume that the Postal Service was not happy with the product.
By the tenth anniversary of this gadget, there was basically nothing to distinguish it from a host of other crazy schemes and inventions that had failed. As a result, Judson focused his energies on automobiles at the turn of the century, making occasional design changes to the fastener. The zipper was never to make him a rich man, although his son did make millions off one of his dad’s automobile patents.
It turns out that Judson’s final patent introduced the idea of clamping each of the fastening elements directly to the cloth. His company, Universal Fastener, finally had a fastener that could be manufactured and sold. In 1905, they introduced the CCurity fastener, which was anything but secure. All any woman had to do was bend over and the fastener would pop open. It also didn’t help that these fasteners were very expensive to produce and that they were made of steel that rusted when laundered. Believe it or not, the company actually recommended that the fastener be removed every time the clothing was washed! (Just how does one go about doing this?)
It may seem obvious to us today, but people couldn’t figure out how to use the zipper. It actually came with a set of directions! (Something like “Make sure your private parts are not hanging out and pull up”?)
Yes, it looked like the zipper was never to be …
But wait! The story can’t be over. There are zippers here, there, and everywhere.
The saga continues …
In 1906, the company hired a German-trained, Swiss-born engineer named Gideon Sundback. Sundback had emigrated to the United States just a year earlier to work for the industrial giant Westinghouse. He later quit in favor of working for the struggling fastener company. You’re probably sitting there wondering why anyone would give up such a secure job to go work for a company that was about to fall into financial ruin. The answer was that he apparently did it for love. He was smitten with Elvira Aronson, the daughter of Universal Fastener’s main machine designer.
Sundback’s first redesign, dubbed the Plako, was introduced in 1908. Although an improvement of Judson’s final design, the new fastener suffered from many of the same inherent problems of the old model. It was a poor product, but it managed to keep the company in business.
Sundback knew that there had to be a better way. In 1917, Sundback patented a rustproof fastener that lacked the mechanical hooks that had proven to be such a big problem in Judson’s original model. Originally called the Hookless Hooker (Sounds a bit dirty, doesn’t it?), they later settled on calling it the Hookless #2 fastener. (Hookless #1 just never made it into production.)
The modern zipper was born and the story is over. (You know that it can’t be over-there are more words below!)
But wait! The company had one big problem. It may have solved the fastener’s problems, but no one wanted it. For years the company tried to market the newfangled device, but it failed to catch on. Too many people remembered the problems of the old CCurity and Plako fasteners and had no interest in getting involved with the product again. Others balked at the high price of the contraption. In an effort to avoid the past, the company officially changed its name to the Hookless Fastener Company.
The first steady use of the zipper was actually during World War 1. A New York City tailor named Robert J. Ewig designed a zippered aviator’s waistcoat that just happened to have the trademarked name of Zip. Surprisingly, that’s not where the term zipper comes from. Ewig’s vests were a failure, so he then designed a zippered money belt, which proved to be very popular with sailors because their uniforms lacked pockets. Approximately 24,000 of these belts were sold, but demand quickly died off once the war was over.
In 1919, the Locktite tobacco pouch proved to be the first successful zippered product. By the mid-1920s, nearly two hundred thousand pieces were produced each year. The fastener was slowly making its way into a wide variety of products, but it was still basically considered a novelty item. More than thirty years after the zipper’s invention, widespread acceptance still seemed far out of reach.
This would all change in 1921. A B. F. Goodrich engineer by the name of Frederick H. Martin had a brainstorm and placed the fastener on a pair of rubber galoshes, originally called the Mystic Boot. The president of the company decided to change the name to the Zipper (Sound familiar?). Oddly, the term Zipper was a B. F. Goodrich trademark for the boot, not the fastener. The product was a smash hit and Hookless had a tough time trying to keep up with demand for the fasteners. By the late 1920s, demand for the boots died out, but the name stuck.
Compare the patent images of Whitcomb Judson’s Shoe Fastening device on the left with Gideon Sundback’s Separable Fastener on the right. It took many years and lots of trial and error to move from the original zipper to what we have today.
Production of the zipper soared from approximately 110,000 in 1920 to more than 17 million in 1929. The rest of the world seemed stuck in the dark recesses of the Great Depression, but Hookless Fastener just continued to grow.
Of course, any good product attracts imitations and the zipper was certainly no exception. Hookless was constantly fighting it out in patent court. Unfortunately, the zipper may have been hard to perfect, but once it was, it was very easy to duplicate. In an effort to make its product stand out in the crowd, Hookless adopted the brand name Talon in 1928.
It has long been rumored that real acceptance of the zipper did not occur until the trend setting Edward, the Prince of Wales and soon-to-be king of England, adopted zippered clothing. When he abdicated the throne in 1936, he caused a worldwide sensation. This just happened to coincide with the zipper’s explosive popularity. In reality, the zipper’s success was due to many years of advertising and the constant pushing of the product.
Talon’s exponential growth continued until World War 11 when the supply of copper, zinc, and nickel that was used to make zippers was cut off. Once the war was over, Talon’s zipper patents had expired and the company was faced with competition from all over the world. As the years passed, Talon’s share of the market declined.
Which leads to the most frequently asked question about zippers. “What does the YKK on my zipper stand for?” To find out, we must go back to 1934 when a Japanese man named Tadao Yashida started manufacturing zippers. His business was destroyed during an air raid on Tokyo in 1945, yet he was able to rise up from the ashes and recover. In 1948, he dubbed his zippers YKK, which stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. (No wonder they shortened it to YKK-try to fit that long name on a tiny
zipper pull tab.) This roughly translates into English as Yoshida Company Limited. Today, YKK is the largest zipper manufacturer in the world, surpassing the output of Talon years ago.
Not only has the zipper become a basic part of our wardrobes but it has also become a part of our vocabulary. For example, when my students are talking out of turn, 1 tell them to “Put a zipper on it.” So now that we have zipped through the history of the zipper, we can now consider this matter all zipped up.
Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
nikola testa
he makes thomas edison look like a dummy
Here’s a task for you to try:
Go check your encyclopedia to find the answers to the following questions (answers are given in parentheses):
1) Who invented the radio? (Marconi)
2) Who invented the x-ray machine? (Roentgen)
3) Who invented the vacuum tube amplifier? (De Forest)
In fact, while you’re at it, check to see who discovered the fluorescent bulb, neon lights, the speedometer, the automobile ignition system, and the basics behind radar, the electron microscope, and the microwave oven.
Chances are that you will see little mention of a guy named Nikola Tesla, one of the most famous scientists in the world at the turn of the century. In fact, few people today have ever heard of the guy. In many ways we can thank Thomas Edison and his crew at General Electric for taking care of that.
Tesla was considered, and still is by many, to be an eccentric who talked of death rays that could destroy ten thousand airplanes at a distance of 250 miles. He claimed to be able to split the Earth in two. In the late 1800s, Tesla believed that both voice and image could be transmitted through the air, and essentially told Edison to take his DC electrical system and stick it you know where. He had a peculiar distaste for pearls and for bade any of his female employees from wearing them. Even more strangely, he would calculate the volume of all his food before he ate it.
In other words, anyone that has even heard of Tesla probably considers him to be a first-class wacko.
But the times are a-changin’.
Excluding his peculiarities, which he picked up in the latter part of his life, Tesla invented every single one of the items mentioned at the beginning of this story (but gets no credit) and much, much more. Look around you and chances are Tesla is somehow responsible for most of the things that make modern life so modern.
No doubt about it, Nikola Tesla was the greatest mind since da Vinci.
So who was this genius?
Little Nicky Tesla was of Serbian heritage and was born in Smiljan, Croatia (then Astro-Hungarian empire), way back in 1856. He had an extraordinary memory and learned to speak six languages. Tesla spent four years at the Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Gratz studying math, physics, and mechanics.
What made Tesla great, however, was his amazing understanding of electricity. Remember that this was a time when electricity was still in its infancy.
When Tesla first came to the United States in 1884, he went to work for Thomas Edison. Edison had all sorts of problems with his DC system of electricity. He promised Tesla big bucks in bonuses if he could get the bugs out of the system. Tesla ended up saving Edison over $100,000 (millions of $$$ by today’s standards), but Edison refused to live up to his end of the bargain. Tesla quit and the Edison people put considerable effort into trying to squash Tesla’s genius. That is one of the main reasons that Tesla is unknown today.
Tesla devised a better system for electrical transmission-the AC (alternating current) system that we use in our homes today. AC offered great advantages over the DC system. By using Tesla’s newly improved transformers (he didn’t invent them), AC voltages could be stepped up and transmitted over long distances through thin wires. DC could not because it required a large power plant every square mile while transmitting through very thick cables.
Of course, a system of transmission would be incomplete without devices to run on them. So, Tesla invented the motors that are used in nearly every appliance in your house. This was no simple achievement; scientists of the late 1800s were convinced that no motor could be devised for an alternating current system, making the use of AC a waste of time. After all, if the current reverses direction sixty times a second, the motor will rock back and forth and never get anywhere. Tesla solved this problem easily and proved everyone wrong.
Word began to spread about his AC system and it eventually reached the ears of George Westinghouse.
Tesla signed a contract with Westinghouse under which he would receive $2.50 for each kilowatt of AC electricity sold. Suddenly, Tesla had the cash to start conducting all the experiments he ever dreamed of.
He began using fluorescent bulbs in his lab some forty years before industry “invented” them. At World’s Fairs and similar exhibitions, he took glass tubes and molded them into the shapes of famous scientists’ names; the first neon signs which we see all around us today. Tesla also designed the world’s first hydroelectric plant, located in Niagara Falls. In addition, he patented the first speedometer for cars.
But Edison had too much money invested in his DC system, so General Electric did its best to discredit Tesla at every turn. Edison constantly tried to show that AC electricity was far more dangerous than his DC power.
Tesla counteracted by staging his own marketing campaign. At the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago (attended by 21 million people), he demonstrated how safe AC electricity was by passing high-frequency AC power through his body to power light bulbs. He then was able to shoot large lightning bolts from his Tesla coils to the crowd without harm. Nice trick!
When the royalties owed to Tesla started to exceed $1 million, Westinghouse ran into financial trouble. Tesla realized that if his contract remained in effect, Westinghouse would be out of business and he had no desire to deal with the creditors. His dream was to have cheap AC electricity available to all people. Tesla took his contract and ripped it up! Instead of becoming the world’s first billionaire, he was paid $216,600 outright for his patents.
In 1898, he demonstrated to the world the first remotecontrolled model boat at Madison Square Garden. He had every intention of selling his invention for use as a remotecontrolled, unmanned torpedo, but the War Department declined. So you can thank Tesla for the invention of those remotecontrolled planes, cars, and boats, and televisions.
Tesla’s biggest dream was to provide free energy to the world. In 1900, backed by $150,000 from financier J. P. Morgan, Tesla began construction of his socalled “Wireless Broadcasting System” tower on Long Island, New York. This broadcasting tower was intended to link the world’s telephone and telegraph services, as well as transmit pictures, stock reports, and weather information worldwide. Unfortunately, Morgan cut funding when he realized that it meant free energy for the world.
Many stories claim that the U.S. government destroyed the tower during World War 1 for fear that the German U-boat spies would use the tower as a landmark to navigate by. In reality, Tesla ran into financial trouble after Morgan cut funding for the project, and the tower was sold for scrap to pay off creditors.
The world thought he was nuts. After all, transmission of voice, picture, and electricity was unheard of at this time.
What the world didn’t know, however, was that Tesla had already demonstrated the principles behind radio nearly ten years before Marconi’s supposed invention. In fact, in 1943 (the year Tesla died), the Supreme Court ruled that Marconi’s patents were invalid because of Tesla’s previous descriptions. Still, most references do not credit Tesla with the invention of radio. (Side note: Marconi’s radio did not transmit voices-it transmitted a signal-something Tesla had demonstrated years before.)
Toward the end of his life, the press started to exaggerate Tesla’s claims.
Tesla reported that he had received radio signals from Mars and Venus. Today we know that he was actually receiving the signals from distant stars, but too little was known about the universe at
that time. Instead, the press had a field day with his “outrageous” claims.
In his Manhattan lab, Tesla made the earth into an electric tuning fork. He managed to get a steam-driven oscillator to vibrate at the same frequency as the ground beneath him (like Ella Fitzgerald breaking the glass with her voice in those old Memorex commercials).
The result? An earthquake on all the surrounding city blocks. The buildings trembled, the windows broke, and the plaster fell off the walls.
Tesla contended that, in theory, the same principle could be used to destroy the Empire State Building or even possibly split the Earth in two. Tesla had accurately determined the resonant frequencies of the Earth almost sixty years before science could confirm his results.
Don’t think he didn’t attempt something like splitting the Earth open. (Well, sort of.)
In his Colorado Springs lab in 1899, he sent waves of energy all the way through the Earth, causing them to bounce back to the source. (This same basic principle provides the foundation for today’s accurate earthquake seismic stations.) When the waves came back, he added more electricity to it.
The result? The largest man-made lightning bolt ever recorded-130 feet!-a world’s record still unbroken! The accompanying thunder was heard twenty-two miles away. The entire meadow surrounding his lab had a strange blue glow, similar to that of St. Elmo’s Fire. Unfortunately, he blew out the local power plant’s equipment, and he was never able to repeat the experiment.
At the beginning of World War 1, the government desperately searched for a way to detect German submarines. The government put Thomas Edison in charge of the search for a good method. Tesla proposed the use of energy waves-what we know today as radar-to detect these ships. Edison rejected Tesla’s idea as ludicrous, and the world had to wait another twentyfive years until it was invented.
His reward for a lifetime of creativity? The prized (to everyone but Tesla) Edison Medal! A real slap in the face after all of the verbal abuses Tesla took from Edison.
Einstein's Refrigerator: And Other Stories from the Flip Side of History Page 8
