Keeping it together

Hook and eye

People have been hooking up their clothes for hundreds of years. In the 1300s, hook-andeye fasteners were known as “crochet and loop” (crochet is French for “hook”), and the simple yet effective design hasn’t changed much since. Hook-and-eye fasteners lent their support to the world’s first brassieres, or bras, which were invented in the 1400s. Most of today’s bras still use them.

Safety pin

Brooches were used to fasten clothes more than a thousand years before the invention of the safety pin in 1849. American inventor Walter Hunt’s design improved on the brooch: It was made from a single piece of wire for easy manufacture, it used a coil in the wire rather than a hinge, and the clasp fastened the pin and shielded the user’s fingers at the same time. It was simplE, yEt Brilliant. Keeping it together Everything would fall apart without the help of these small but useful inventions. A zipper’s teeth are brought together and locked into The most important part of your WARDROBE T h e zi p p e r i s t h e worl d’ s most wid el y used fastener . place by the slider.

Snaps

If you were an actor with a quick change between scenes in the 1800s, you might use some of these newly invented fasteners, which made whipping costumes on and off easy. German Heribert Bauer’s 1885 snaps were improved by American Jack Weil during the 1900s, who added them to denim shirts in place of buttons—giving the finishing touch to the cowboy look.

Zipper

American Whitcomb Judson wanted to get his boots on and off quicker, so in 1893 he invented a fastener that hooked them up with one pull, using a sliding device on a row of clasps. Judson’s fastener tended to come undone, but Gideon Sundback developed a version that used metal teeth on flexible tape. It was used as the fastener for a boot called the Zipper, and the name stuck.

Velcro

George de Mestral got the idea for Velcro when he saw burdock burrs sticking to his dog’s coat. When he looked at them through a microscope, he saw that the burrs were covered in tiny hooks that attached to loops in the dog’s fur.

He developed Velcro so that one side was covered in tiny hooks, and the other in tiny loops. The name comes from the French velours croché, or “hooked velvet.”

Velcro works like microscop ic hoo ks a n d e yes .

Work and p lay

Time is money in our busy world, so great inventions that reduce workloads and improve productivity are always welcome. From robots to bar codes, inspiring ideas have revolutionized the business world, raking in megabucks. That’s all in a day’s work, but what about letting off some steam afterward? Brilliant breakthroughs in the entertainment and leisure industries have stolen the limelight, allowing us to kick back and enjoy our free time.