The history of zippers

History of invention
Zipper is also known as a pull lock. It is one of the ten inventions that are convenient for people’s life in modern times.
The appearance of zippers was a century ago. At that time, in some parts of central Europe, attempts were made to replace buttons and bows with belts, hooks and rings, and experiments began to develop zippers. Zippers are first used in military uniforms. During World War I, the U.S. military ordered a large number of zippers for soldiers to dress in the first world war. But the promotion of zippers in the folk was relatively late, until 1930, when women accepted, used to replace the buttons of clothing.
Zipper was acquired in 1926 by the name. A novelist named Franco reportedly said at a business lunch promoting a zipper sample: “Once pulled, it opened!” One more pull, it’s off! “The characteristics of the zipper are very brief. This is the word zipper.
The invention of the zipper was originally derived from the boots that people wore. In the mid-19th century, the boots were very popular, especially suitable for walking muddy or horse excreta roads, but the disadvantage is that the boots of the iron hook button supfer as many as 20, wearing extremely time-consuming. This shortcoming has left inventors scratching their heads and cost sponsors a lot of money and patience. In order to avoid the trouble of wearing boots, people even put up with wearing boots all day without taking off. Finally, in 1851, American Elias Howe applied for a patent for a zipper-like design, but it was not commercialized or even forgotten for half a century.
In 1893 (i.e. 1883), an American engineer (Kuwaiti) named Judson developed a “sliding device” and obtained a patent, which was the initial prototype of the zipper. The advent of this device has had an impact on the buckle hooks used on high boots. But the invention didn’t catch on soon, mainly because the early locking devices were of poor quality and were easy to loosen at inappropriate times and places, embarrassing.
In 1902, a company that had originally produced buttons and laces became interested in Judson’s invention, and they bought the patent, registered the “button must” trademark, and began producing zippers on shoes. But this “crab-eating” company soon embarked on the road to destruction, its production of “must-be” is either unable to pull, or can not open, and sometimes suddenly open, so that consumers embarrassed. The discredited “deduction” became a slow-selling product, and the first company to produce zippers closed its doors at a loss.
In 1912, Sunderbach, an employee of Judson, improved the “automatic button” by changing each tooth in the chain to a concave shape, so that the teeth could be completely one-to-one, neither easily stuck nor disjointed, and had a new name, zipper.
In 1913, the Swede Sanbach improved the rough locking device to make it a reliable commodity. His approach was to attach the metal locks to a flexible shaft. The zipper works by having a small hook for each tooth that matches the hole under a small tooth on the opposite side of the other band. The zipper is strong and can only be pulled apart if the sliding slide of the sliding tooth opens.
It wasn’t until the 1890s that the transition took place, and Whitcomb, a mechanical engineer from Chicago, said: “It’s not like we’re going to be able to do that. L. Judison (Whitcomb. L. Judson, came up with a slide-device to fit and separate the two-row buckles (the principle is very similar to the zipper, although the term zipper appeared after about 30 years). Judison’s invention was fortunate to receive financial support from Pennsylvania attorney Lewis Walker. Walker is highly interested in Judison’s new design.
History is often rewritten by occasional factors, as confirmed by the history of zippers. A plane crash that shocked the world “saved” the dying zipper.
Paris’s Place de la Concorde was windy and sun-dying, and the highly selected pilots confidently boarded the most advanced aircraft of the day, performing flights for a large number of politicians and dignitaries. But when the plane did a few beautiful taxiing action, but a heel fell down, the plane destroyed people!
After careful analysis and forensics by the accident investigation team, it turned out that the pilot’s jacket dropped a button, and this button just rolled into the aircraft engine, thus causing the accident. The bitter cost led the French Ministry of Defence to issue an order not to pin buttons on flight clothing. European countries have followed suit, and have been spreading across the Pacific to the United States of America.
“We have hope!” Senbeck learned of the incident and decided it was an opportunity to bring the zipper back to life, and he immediately contacted the Department of Defense to offer to sew the new pilot uniform at the best price. The pilot’s new uniform with zippers undoubtedly had a huge advertising effect. The Army and Navy are following suit. Senbeck wasted no time in contact with clothing manufacturers in the United States and Europe, mass production without buckles and zippered tops, zippers are everywhere, increasingly popular.
After the outbreak of World War I, U.S. military personnel realized that zippers on military clothing could speed up the clothing of soldiers, so they tried zippers in the pockets of their clothes and in front of their pants, a move that was popular with front-line generals. The 24,000 zip-up uniforms produced in 1917 were immediately sold out. In 1918, the United States put a zipper on another 10,000 flight suits.
During World War I, the U.S. economy was in a slump, with steel at five cents a pound, workers being paid six dollars a week, and the company cutting back on layoffs, leaving only Senbeck and another person, Sambeck, as both a manager and engineer. The company’s economy encountered unprecedented difficulties, in order to repay the arrears of the wire to provide wire for the company thousands of dollars, Senbeck had to repair a machine to produce paper clips to make money. Fortunately, patrons kept coming up, and James O’Neill, the playwright’s father, was on tour to stage the play The Count of Monte Cristo, and he was interested in Senbeck’s Prabuckle zipper.
Despite the turnaround in his career, Senbeck personally suffered an unprecedented blow, and his wife died in a difficult birth. Senbeck was sad and more focused on improving the zipper. In 1913 he re-applied for a patent, and the patent license was approved in 1917 (Patent No. 1219881). Walker calls the patent a “hidden hook” and is optimistic about the future. Walker renamed the company “Hookless Fastener Company” and the plant moved to Meadville.
Senbeck further improved the hookless button, the tooth shape changed to a spoon-shaped, the top is convex, the end concave, the sliding device can make the left and right “toothed part” inline, and then slide back separate, called “no hook-type two”, and design the machine to make the tooth-like part. In 1913 he officially announced the breakthrough of the technology. American Science has the cover story of Senbeck’s patent.
Six months later, Senbeck is ready to mass-produce the buttons, and the hookless No.2 is ready to go on sale.
Walker’s second son also spent eight years working on the improvement of hookless buttons. Josephine Calhoun of Florida also patented a similar safety zipper in 1907. That same year, Frank Canfielt of Colorado filed for a patent. The inventors who worked on this research were not only in the United States, but the closest to Senbeck’s finished product was the 1912 patent of Katharina Kuhn-Moos of Zurich and Henri Forster, but none of them became a commodity like the hookless second.

The demand of the market determines the success or failure of the product. The hookless number two started with not many orders. Pittsburgh’s Mcrey’s department store thinks the hookless number 2 is a good fit for use in skirts and suits, requiring manufacturers to adopt the hookless two, but few imitators are afraid to take risks with new products. Senbeck is constantly improving the performance of the zipper to meet the needs of customers.
Medwell’s factory manufacturing technology is getting better, making 1,630 hookless numbers a day, and there are no sub-products, resulting in an increasing number of orders. World War I also brought new opportunities for new products, with soldiers’ money-belts increasing demand for hookless twos, Air Force flight wear with hook-free type two not only saving materials, but also better wind protection, and Navy life jackets using hookless-free iies. The government then earmarked metal materials for production.
Although the hookless second has been proved to be useful, but the high price is still not universal, Senbeck understand this, but also committed to reducing production costs, improve manufacturing efficiency. He invented the S-L machine to reduce the unnecessary waste of materials in the production process, as long as the original raw material 41c/o can be. After reducing production costs, the first product to be applied was locktite tobacco bags, which were sold with considerable success, and by the end of 1921, tobacco companies needed an unprecedented number of hookless numbers per week. In order to meet the high demand, the hookless button company added a new factory.
In 1921, B.F. Goodrich Company of Ohio ordered a small amount of products from the hookless button company for use in the rubber sleeveshoes they produced. After the trial found good results, and ordered in bulk, and found shortcomings to inform the hookless button company. The company has been revamped to introduce the Mystery Boot, which features the ability to wear or take it off with a pull.
Marketers were not satisfied with the name of the wonderful boots, looking for a more distinctive name, the manager was inspired to think of the “Zip” as the sound of the object’s fast-moving voice, then changed the name of the wonderful boot (see figure II) and designed zipper’s zipper trademark, The product was protected by law, and this year it was 1923, and later “Zipper” – “zipper” – became the general name for all similar hookless button products. Unfortunately, Judison died in 1909, never before to hear the term “zipper” or see his invention succeed in the world.
That winter, the company sold nearly half a million pairs of zipper boots, in the mid-1920s to buy at least a million zippers a year from the hookless button company, hookless button company has a sense of “no hook” with the word negative association, and the word “zipper” was created by the company, so came up with the term “Talon”, In 1937 the company changed its name to Eagle Paws.
Prior to 1930, the hookless button company sold 20 million “hawk claws” a year, ranging from pen boxes to the bonnets of motorboats. But the ready-to-wear industry is still waiting to be used. By the mid-1930s, the costume designer Elsa Schiaparelli had first adopted “Eagle Paws”, which The New Yorker described as a spring 1935 fashion show that was “full of zippers”. Since then, the garment industry has gradually adopted zippers.
Zipper manufacturing technology with the spread of products and gradually spread around the world, Switzerland, Germany and other European countries, Japan, China and other Asian countries have begun to establish zipper production workshop.
In 1917, the zipper was introduced to Japan, when the zipper because of the scarcity, can only be used as a noble person to show off their identity jewelry. In 1927, in the early days of Showa, Hiroshima Prefecture, the People began to manufacture zippers, with the “jig card” trademark began to sell. At that time, the zipper was known for its ruggedness, so “jigs” became synonymous with zippers. The Japanese still refer to the zipper as a “jig”.
In 1932, Japan began to make zippers by hand. Because eccentric manual punches and other machines at that time are very advanced are constantly being developed, so that zippers can be mass production, prices gradually decline, clothing and luggage industry began to use zippers, so that the industry outlook is very active.
In 1934, Shanghai, Hong Kong, the United States of America began to export in bulk. Yoshida Industrial Co., Ltd., the predecessor of the “Three S Chamber of Commerce” was founded on January 1 this year.
After 1937, the North and Central and South American zippers were sold out in large quantities. Zippers have finally emerged in the form of emerging industries, and they have also become an important part of The Japanese industry. But in 1941, when the Pacific War broke out, Japan was eventually defeated, and the war dealt a devastating blow to Japan’s domestic industry, including the zipper industry, when all but some of the military zippers were forced to switch or abandon their jobs.
After the war in 1946, the demand for zippers increased rapidly due to the influence of the U.S. troops stationed in Japan at that time. However, the enormous trauma of the war has made it impossible for the Japanese zipper industry to cope with demand in the short term. “Japanese-style manufacturing method”, the shortcomings of handicrafts manufacturing exposed. At that time, resulting in the Japanese manufacturing of “zip-bad” bad image.
In 1950, Japan’s Yoshida Industrial Co., Ltd. imported automatic chain dental machines, into the first step of mechanized production. Following that, the company invented the pull head automatic press, the development of success. Not only to solve the shortcomings of the past manufacturing, but also the manufacturing process to the production process reform, which led to the progress of the entire zipper industry in Japan. In 1951, Japan’s own manufacture of 30 chain dental machines put into use, and finally completed the industry’s unparalleled modern factory equipment.
Almost at the same time as the development of the zipped industry in Japan, some european countries, such as Switzerland, Germany and other zippers are also developing. In the 1930s, Optilon, a Swiss company, was founded in the Swiss city of Zug. For decades, the company to “comfort” and “quality” as the first element, and constantly improve the design, after technical cooperation with more than 30 foreign companies, new varieties of zippers continue to appear, its companies around the world have set up enterprises and factories, the United States Ofiton zipper company, Japan’s Yoshida Co., Ltd. is also well-known world-class zipper enterprises.
In 1953, Germany first introduced a zipper made from plastic, creating a pioneer in non-metallic zippers.
The production of Chinese zippers was transferred from Japan to Shanghai in 1930. At that time, in Houjialu, Shanghai City, Wang he set up China’s first zipper factory, and later, Wu Xiangxin opened a zipper factory, in 1933 founded the Shanghai Samsung (i.e. Huaguang) zipper factory.
In 1949, China has more than 20 small and medium-sized zipper enterprises, about 1000 people in business. Mainly by hand operation, poor equipment.
In 1958, Shanghai Samsung zipper factory introduced the German production of automatic rice metering machine, and carried out technical reform, automatic meter ingress speed from 1440 to 3000 rpm, equivalent to 230 times manual; Brushlight, washing belt, on-the-top, belt, non-woven machine and other high-efficiency special equipment reform success, the promotion of aluminum magnesium alloy liquid extraction wire, carbide burn into a whole mold and other new processes, new technologies, to achieve China’s zipper industry’s first technological revolution.
In 1958, the Invisible Zipper (CONCEAL) went on sale.
The Grand (L-type) went on sale in 1959.
In 1961, Delrin resin zipper injection machine was introduced, Delrin resin zipper began to sell.
In 1963 EFJON double bone zipper selling.
In 1971, knitted cloth with BEULON zippers went on sale.
In 1974, Beijing introduced the Swiss nylon zipper (horizontal) production equipment, with the introduction of eight polyester zipper production equipment produced in France, and soon the domestic such as Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hubei, Guangdong, and other places have introduced Germany, Japan, Taiwan and other countries and regions of non-metallic zipper equipment, non-metallic pull in China began to develop.
In 1978, fishing nets were sold with zippers.
In 1979, the winged resin zipper VISLON went on sale.
In 1985, watertight, airtight zippers began to sell.
In 1988 JOYLONR track zippers went on sale.
In 1989, ion plating zippers went on sale.
In 1991 the injection molding QUICKLON zipper went on sale.
In 1992, EVER BRIGHT, VISLON thermal transfer zipper, injection molding (moulded zipper) began to sell.
In 1993, Q meshe (QUICKLON), Q mate (pair quickLON), Q touch (curtain track QUICKLON) went on sale.
In 1994 wide-format molded QUICKLON (continuous injection molding), Dali began to sell. Start selling. From August 1st, Yoshida Corporation of Japan changed its name to YKK.