Gideon Sundbäck
Engineer and inventor
Swedish-born engineer in the United States who designed the modern zip fastener and the machines that made it.
Gideon Sundbäck was born in Småland, trained as an engineer in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1905. He joined a company trying to improve Whitcomb Judson’s hook fastener.
In 1913 he designed a fastener with small, identical interlocking teeth, and he built machines that could make it in large quantities. He later founded a zip factory in Canada.