Zip

A zip, also known as a zipper or zip fastener is a device for binding the edges of an opening of fabric or other flexible material. It is used mostly to hold clothes together. The zip can also be used for fastening luggage, bags, sporting goods and camping gear (e.g. tents and sleeping bags).

HISTORY

Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, also received a patent for an "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure" on April 29, 1851. This invention was an early version of what we now know as the zipper and was designed to be used as a fastening device on clothing and other textile products. However, despite receiving the patent, Howe never attempted to market his invention and the idea of the zipper was later developed by other inventors.

The zip fastener was invented by a Chicago engineer named Whitcomb L. Judson. He
patented his device on August 29, 1893 and exhibited it at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in his home city. Whitcomb's fastener, which he called a "Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes" was based on a string of hook-and-eye fasteners.

Judson's original 'clasp locker' patent, 1893

The design for the modern zip, the Talon Slide Fastener, was invented in 1913 by Swedish engineer Gideon Sundback, who was living in Meadville, Pennsylvania, Sundback substituted two parallel strings of metal teeth in place of Judson's hooks and eyes and called it the Hookless #2. Sundback received a patent for his zip, which he called a "Separable fastener" on March 20, 1917.

Sundback's invention was assured success when the US Navy bought 10,000 zips for use on new flying suits in World War I.

Sandback's 1917 patent

In the late 1920s and early 1930s slide fasteners started appearing on clothing for both men and women. The first dresses incorporating the zipper appeared in the 1930s.

ETYMOLOGY

The word zip originally referred to the sharp sound of a fast-moving object such as a mosquito (first recorded in 1875) or a bullet (1885).

The word 'zipper' was introduced by Goodrich's 1925 rubber galoshes called "Zipper Boots". The abbreviation zip was also first recorded in 1925.

The term zip-fastener was first seen in 1927 in the Daily Express.

The first use of the verb 'to zip' in the sense of doing up a zip, was in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World .

Zipper slider brings together the two sides By DemonDeLuxe (Dominique Toussaint) 

FUN ZIP FACTS 

Worldwide, the zip industry is estimated to be worth almost £10 billion a year

Although the zipper market in the 1960s was dominated by Optilon (Germany) and Talon Zipper (USA) and, Japanese manufacturer YKK grew to become the industry giant by the 1980s. By then, YKK was holding 45 percent of world market share, followed by Optilon (8 percent) and Talon Zipper (7 percent).

The "YKK" on your zippers stands for "Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushiki Kaisha," which is Japanese for "Yoshida Manufacturing Shareholding Company."

YKK, makes everything they use in their production processes, in-house. From the machines they use to make their zippers, to smelting their own brass - they even make the boxes they ship their zippers in.

Today, the chances are, the zip that keeps your valuables in place started life in a factory in Qiaotou, a dusty town in Zhejiang Province, China. According to a report in The Guardian in 2005, Qiaotou's zip plants manufacture 80 per cent of the world's zips, churning out 124,000 miles of zip each year (enough to stretch five times round the globe or halfway to the moon).

A Q-Tip dipped in shampoo and rubbed into the area where a zipper is caught on a jacket can get it unstuck.

Sources The Independent, Daily Express