The Zipper's Long Road: How Gideon Sundback Perfected a Failed Idea

A Problem Looking for a Solution

The desire for a quick, reliable clothing fastener predates the zipper by a long time. Buttons had been in use for centuries, but they required two hands to operate, often popped off, and were difficult to manage at the back of a garment. Hooks and eyes were fiddly and slow. As clothing became more complex in the industrial age and the market for mass-produced ready-to-wear garments grew, the practical shortcomings of existing fasteners became more economically significant.

The first attempt at something like a zipper came from Elias Howe — the same inventor who had made the sewing machine commercially viable — who patented an "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure" in 1851. Howe's device used a series of clasps joined by a string and was intended to be run along the edge of a garment to fasten it. It was never developed commercially, and Howe's patent went unexercised. The concept was sound in principle but not yet technically realized.

Whitcomb Judson's Near-Miss

The more direct predecessor to the zipper came from the American inventor Whitcomb Judson, who patented a "Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes" in 1891. Judson's device consisted of a series of hook-and-eye fasteners that could be engaged or disengaged by running a sliding guide along them. He founded the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture and market it, and it was displayed at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The reaction was underwhelming. The device was complicated to manufacture, prone to popping open unexpectedly, difficult to align correctly, and had a tendency to jam. It was improved in subsequent patents but never worked well enough to achieve widespread adoption.

The Universal Fastener Company struggled and reorganized, eventually relocating to Hoboken, New Jersey. It was there that Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-born electrical engineer who had joined the company and married the plant manager's daughter, turned the flawed design into something functional.

Sundback's Critical Improvements

Sundback's key contribution was a fundamental redesign of the interlocking element. Instead of using hooks and eyes — inherently directional connectors that could engage incorrectly — he developed a system of cup-shaped scoops with projecting knobs on one side and indentations on the other. When the slider was drawn upward, it squeezed the opposing rows of scoops together so that each knob seated precisely into the corresponding indentation on the opposite side, forming a tight, continuous interlock. When drawn downward, a wedge in the slider's rear separated the scoops smoothly and without force.

This design, patented in 1913 and refined in subsequent patents, produced a fastener that was self-aligning, difficult to jam, and held firmly when closed without any tendency to spring open. Manufacturing the scoops to the required precision was itself an engineering challenge, and Sundback also designed the machinery to produce them, filing a separate patent for the manufacturing equipment. By 1917 he had a fully functional product ready for commercial production.

From Military Use to Cultural Icon

The initial market was not clothing but military equipment. During World War I, Sundback's fasteners were ordered by the US military for flying suits and money belts, where secure, quick-opening closures were genuinely valuable. The B.F. Goodrich Company adopted the fastener for rubber galoshes in 1923, and it was Goodrich's president who coined the name "zipper" — from the sound the slider made as it ran along the teeth. The name was quickly genericized and attached to the product regardless of manufacturer.

Fashion adoption came gradually. The breakthrough in mainstream clothing came in the 1930s when fashion designers began promoting the zipper as modern, hygienic (no gaps or buttons to harbor germs), and easy to operate. Children's clothing adopted it first, driven by the practical argument that children could dress themselves more easily with zippers than buttons. By World War II, metal shortages and the practicality of the zipper in military garments had made it standard equipment. Today it is so commonplace that its engineering complexity — each slider precisely guiding dozens of interlocking metal or nylon elements into perfect alignment thousands of times over its working life — goes entirely unnoticed.