Zip fastener
Gideon Sundbäck’s zip of 1913 with small, identical teeth – and the machines that made it cheap.
Whitcomb Judson had patented a hooked fastener in 1893, but it worked poorly. Gideon Sundbäck, an engineer at the company trying to improve it, designed in 1913 a zip with small teeth that slid together.
The zip was first used on boots and tobacco pouches and was named the zipper for rubber boots in the 1920s. Only in the 1930s did it become common in clothing.
Materials: Metal, later plastic; fabric tapes
Manufacture: The teeth were stamped and attached to the tapes by machines Sundbäck designed.
Small identical teeth that interlock.
A metal slider and pull bearing the maker’s name.
Metal teeth before the 1960s, often plastic afterwards.