The history of the invention of zipper
Zipper is also called zipper. It is one of the top ten inventions that facilitate people's life in modern times.
The appearance of zipper is a century ago. At that time, in some places in central Europe, people attempted to replace buttons and bows by means of bands, hooks and loops, and began to conduct experiments on developing zippers. Zippers were first used in military uniforms. In World War I, the U.S. Army first ordered a large number of zippers for soldiers to make clothing. However, the promotion of zippers in the civilian population was relatively late, until 1930 was accepted by women to replace the buttons of clothing.
The zipper acquired its present name in 1926. A novelist named Franco, at a luncheon for business and industry promoting a sample zipper, reportedly said, "One pull, and it opens! One more pull and it closes!" A very succinct description of a zipper. That's how the word zipper came about.
The invention of the zipper prototype, initially from people wearing boots. In the middle of the nineteenth century, boots were very popular, especially suitable for walking on muddy or horse excrement roads, but the disadvantage is that the boots have as many as 20 hooked buttons, which is extremely time-consuming to put on and take off. This disadvantage cost the inventor a lot of headaches and the sponsor a lot of money and patience. In order to avoid the trouble of putting on and taking off the boots, people even put up with wearing the boots for a whole day without taking them off. Finally in 1851, the American Alice Howe (Elias Howe) applied for a patent for a similar zipper design, but it was not commercialized and even forgotten for half a century.
In 1893 (a said 1883), an American engineer called Judson (Kuwaiti), developed a "slide's no tight device", and received a patent, which is the original prototype of the zipper. The appearance of this device had an impact on the button hooks used on high boots. But the invention did not catch on quickly, mainly because this early locking device was of poor quality and was prone to loosening at inappropriate times and places, embarrassing people.
In 1913, the Swede Sambak improved this crude locking device and turned it into a reliable commodity. The method he used was to attach metal locking teeth to a flexible shaft. This type of zipper works by having each tooth be a small hook that matches an eyelet under a small tooth on another strip next to and opposite it. This type of zipper is strong and can only be pulled apart when the slider slides to open the teeth.
The turnaround came in the 1890s, when Whitcomb L. Judson, a mechanical engineer from Chicago, came up with the idea of using a slider-device to nestle and separate two rows of buckles (the principle is very similar to that of a zipper, though the term zipper [ zipper] was a term that did not appear until about 30 years later). Judson's invention was fortunate to have the financial backing of Lewis Walker, a Pennsylvania attorney. Walker was highly interested in Judson's new design.
During World War I, when the U.S. economy was in the doldrums, with steel at five cents a pound and workers earning six dollars a week, the company was downsized to just Sembeck and one other person, Sembeck, who was both manager and engineer. The company was experiencing unprecedented financial difficulties, and in order to pay back the thousands of dollars owed to Wakabayashi, who supplied the steel wire, Sembeck had to repair a machine to make paper clips to make money. Fortunately, sponsors kept coming, and James O'Neill, the father of playwrights, who was touring a production of The Count of Monte Cristo at the time, took a keen interest in Sembeck's pull-tab zippers.
While his career took a turn for the better, Sembeck suffered a personal blow when his wife died in childbirth. After the death of his wife, Sembeck concentrated on improving the zipper, and in 1913 he applied for a patent, which was granted in 1917 (Patent No. 1219881). Walker called the patent the "hidden hook" (hidden hook) and was optimistic about the future. Walker renamed the company the Hookless Fastener Company and moved the factory to Meadville.
Senbeck further improved the Hookless Fastener by making the teeth spoon-shaped, with a convex tip and a concave end, and a sliding device that allowed the left and right "teeth" to fit together and then separate when slid back in, known as the "Hookless No. 2," and by designing a machine to make the teeth. In 1913, he officially announced that this technology had been broken through. In 1913, he officially announced the breakthrough, and Science America featured Sembeck's patent as its cover story.
Six months later, Sembeck was ready to mass-produce the buttons, and the Hookless II was ready for market.
Walker's second son also spent eight years working on improvements to the hookless button. Josephine Calhoun of Florida patented a similar safety zipper in 1907. That same year, Frank Canfielt of Colorado also applied for a patent. The inventors who worked on this were not the only ones to appear in the U.S. Among the closest to Sembeck's final product were Katharina Kuhn-Moos of Zurich and Henri Forster's 1912 patent, though neither became a commercial product like the Hookless II.
Market demand made or broke the product. The Hookless II didn't have many orders at first. Mcreery's department store in Pittsburgh thought the hookless number two would be good for dresses and suits and asked manufacturers to use it across the board, but there weren't enough imitators to take a chance on the new product. Sembeck, in an effort to gain customers, continued to improve the performance of the zipper to meet the need.
Madeville's factory became so skilled that it made 1,630 hookless No. 2s a day with no defects, resulting in an increasing number of orders. The First World War also brought new opportunities for new products, and the demand for the hookless two increased because of the soldier's money belt; the air force used the hookless two not only to save material, but also to protect against the wind better; the navy's life jackets also used the hookless two. The government then allocated special metal materials for production.
The Hookless II proved to be a good choice, but its high price prevented it from being widely used. Understanding this, Sembeck worked to reduce production costs and improve manufacturing efficiency. He invented the S-L machine to reduce unnecessary waste of materials in the production process, as long as the original 41℅ of the raw materials can be. After reducing production costs, the application of the first product is Laktite (Locktite) tobacco bags, the results of the sales are quite successful, the end of 1921, the tobacco company needs an unprecedented number of hookless two per week. To accommodate the high demand, the Hookless Button Company added a new factory.
In 1921, the B.F. Goodrich Company of Ohio ordered a small quantity of hookless buttons for use in their rubber overshoes. After trying the product and finding it to be effective, they ordered large quantities and informed Hookless of the shortcomings they found. The company improved the product and introduced the Mystery Boot, which featured a single pull to put on or take off.
Marketers were not satisfied with the name Mystery Boot and wanted to find a name that better showed its characteristics. In a moment of inspiration, the manager thought of the onomatopoeic word "Zip" - the sound of an object moving quickly - and renamed the Mystery Boot the Zipper (see below). The year was 1923, and "Zipper" - "zipper" - became the generic name for all similar hookless button products. Sadly, Judson died in 1909 without ever having heard the term "zipper" or seen his invention succeed in catching on in the world.
That winter, Howe & Sons sold nearly half a million pairs of zipper boots, and by the mid-1920s was buying at least a million zippers a year from the Hookless Button Company, which felt that the word "hookless" had a negative association and that the word "zipper" was a good choice for the company. The term "zipper" was coined by Howe & Fuchs, so it came up with the term "Talon," and the company changed its name to Eagle Claw in 1937.
By 1930, the hookless button company was selling 20 million Eagle Claws a year, in applications ranging from pen cases to motorcycle hoods. But the garment industry remained on the sidelines. By the mid-1930s, costume designer Elsa Schiaparelli was the first to adopt the Eagle Claw in such large numbers that the New Yorker described the 1935 Spring Fashion Show as "draped with zippers! ". Only thereafter did the ready-to-wear industry gradually adopt zippers.
The zipper manufacturing technology gradually spread around the world with the circulation of products. European countries such as Switzerland and Germany, and Asian countries such as Japan and China started to establish zipper production workshops.
In 1917, zippers were introduced to Japan, at that time, due to the scarcity of zippers, they could only be used as ornaments for dignitaries to show off their status. 1927, at the beginning of Showa period in Japan, the people of Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture began to manufacture zippers, which were sold under the trademark of "Jig Brand". At that time, zippers were known for their strength and durability, so "jig" became synonymous with zippers. To this day, the Japanese still refer to "zippers" as "jigs".
In 1932, Japan began making zippers by hand in large quantities. As machines that were advanced at the time, such as the eccentric manual press, continued to be developed, zippers could be mass-produced, prices gradually came down, and zippers began to be used in the apparel and luggage industries, which led to an active outlook for the industry.
In 1934, zipper products from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the United States began to be exported in large quantities. On January 1, 1934, "Sansho Shokai", the predecessor of Nippon Yoshida Kogyo, was established.
After 1937, a large number of zippers were sold in North America and Central and South America. Zippers finally appeared as a new industry, and likewise, zippers became an important player in Japanese industry. However, the Pacific War broke out in 1941, and Japan finally became a defeated country. The war brought a devastating blow to Japan's domestic industries, including the zipper industry, and at that time, in addition to a part of the military zipper industry stayed behind, almost all the other workshops were forced to switch to other businesses or abolished.
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 great trauma of the war made it impossible for the Japanese zipper industry to cope with the demand in the short term. The shortcomings of "Japanese manufacturing method" and handicraft manufacturing were exposed. At that time, it created a bad image of Japanese manufacturing as "zippers are easy to break".
In 1950, Japan's Yoshida Kogyo imported an automatic chain tooth machine, the first step into mechanized production. Following this, the company invented the pulling head automatic stamping machine, developed successfully. This not only solved the shortcomings of manufacturing in the past, but also reformed the manufacturing process to the production process, which led to the progress of the entire zipper industry in Japan. (Nippon Yoshida Co., Ltd., product name YKK, has six domestic factories in Ikuti, Kurobe, Koshiko, Tohoku, Shikoku, and Kyushu, and has set up factories in more than forty countries and regions overseas.) Japan's own manufacturing of 30 sets of zipper teeth manufacturing machine was put into use in 1951, and finally completed the industry's unrivaled modernization of the factory equipment.
Almost at the same time as the development of the Japanese zipper industry, some European countries, such as Switzerland, Germany and other zippers were also developing. In the 1930s, the Swiss company Optilon was founded and headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. Over the past decades, the company has taken "comfort" and "quality" as the first element, constantly improved its design, and through technical cooperation with more than 30 foreign companies, new varieties of zippers keep appearing, and it has set up enterprises and factories all over the world. It has established enterprises and factories all over the world and become a world-class zipper enterprise as famous as Tyrone Zipper Company of the United States and Yoshida Corporation of Japan.
In 1953, Germany launched the zipper made of plastic for the first time, which created the precedent of non-metallic zipper.
China's zipper production was introduced to Shanghai from Japan in 1930. At that time, in Houjia Road in Shanghai city, Wang Hexing set up the first zipper factory in China, later, Wu Xiangxin opened another zipper factory, and in 1933, he founded Shanghai Samsung (i.e. Huaguang) Zipper Factory.
In 1949, there were more than 20 small and medium-sized zipper enterprises in China, with about 1,000 people employed. They were mainly operated by hand with simple equipment.
In 1958, Shanghai Samsung Zipper Factory introduced the automatic rice discharging machine produced in Germany and carried out technical reforms, which increased the speed of the automatic rice discharging machine from 1,440 revolutions per minute to 3,000 revolutions per minute, equivalent to 230 times of the manual operation; the production of slider was reformed from single-head punching to twelve-channel one-time molding, which increased the production efficiency by more than 50 times; and efficient special equipments were provided for the latter processes such as smoothing, brushing, tape-washing, waxing, tape-merging and shuttleless weaving machines, which were used to make zippers. The reform of high-efficiency special equipments, such as shuttle loom, etc., was successful; the promotion of new techniques and technologies, such as aluminum-magnesium alloy liquid wire drawing and cemented carbide sintering into integral mold, realized the first technological revolution in China's zipper industry.
In 1958, invisible zippers (CONCEAL) began to be sold.
1959 The Grand (L-type) began to sell.
1961 Delrin resin zipper injection molding machine is introduced, and Delrin resin zippers are sold.
1963 EFJON double-bone zippers were introduced.
1971 BEULON zipper with knitted fabric was introduced.
In 1974, Beijing introduced nylon zipper (horizontal) production equipment from Switzerland; with the introduction of eight polyester zipper production equipments from France in Tianjin; and soon the non-metallic zipper equipments from Germany, Japan, Taiwan and other countries and regions were introduced one after another in the country such as Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hubei, Guangdong and so on, and the non-metallic zipper began to develop in China.
In 1978, zippers for fishing nets began to be sold.
In 1979 the resin zipper VISLON with wings began to be sold.
1985 Watertight and airtight zippers were sold.
1988JOYLONR track zippers were introduced.
1989 Ion plating zippers started sales.
1991 Injection molded QUICKLON zippers started sales.
1992EVER BRIGHT, VISLON heat transfer zippers, and injection molding (die-cast type zippers) began sales.
1993Q meshe (QUICKLON), Q mate (paired QUICKLON), and Q touch (curtain track QUICKLON) were launched.
1994 Wide mold casting QUICKLON (continuous injection molding), Dali started sales. Sales began. Nippon Yoshida Co., Ltd. changed its name to YKK from August 1st.
Since 1980, especially after 1995, China's zipper production has been developing at an unprecedented speed, and a large number of new private zipper enterprises have come to the fore, and their scale has been expanding. The number of zipper products has been increasing, at present, the world's three major types of zippers, all varieties and specifications can basically be produced. 1999 China's zipper production achieved the first historic leap, the output of more than 10 billion meters, and became the world's largest producer of zippers.
Show zipper
Judson in 1893 in Chicago Columbia World's Fair to show his new invention, it will be made in the shoes, directly on their feet (patent application date August 29, 1893, Patent No. 504038). Walker was extremely impressed by this invention, and the two formed a partnership in 1894 to create the Universal Fastener Company (Universal Fastener Company), which was patented again in 1896. However, the product was a bit bulky and not favored by manufacturers. The product was later adapted for use in pouches, but only 20 pouches were in use by the end of 1897. Walker applied the design to military shoes, earning him the nickname "Colonel Walker".
Improving the design
Judson continued to improve the design of his products to accommodate the tights. He exhausted his efforts and kept coming up with new inventions, but each advancement brought more new problems and cost a lot of money. Walker, the partner, once depicted the grueling nature of the invention by saying that he discovered more problems than he solved in the process.
In 1901 Judson patented a machine that would connect the teeth of a row of zippers. But the machine was too complicated to use, so the Global Slide Button Company languished for a while. In 1904, the company changed its name to the Automatic Hook and Eye Company, and named its product Safety (C-Hook). In 1904, the company changed its name to Automatic Hook and Eye Company, and named the product C-curity, taking the advantage that the convex zipper would not be easily loosened, but the zipper was still often ripped open or stuck, and eventually had to remove the entire zipper from the garment.
The shortcomings of Judson's design were later addressed by Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback, a Swede born in 1880. Interested in mechanics from an early age, Sundback studied in Germany and returned to the service after earning a degree in electrical engineering in 1903, before immigrating to the United States. After working for Siemens in Pittsburgh, Sundback moved to Hoboken, N.J., the site of the company's factory, due to the proximity of the company's shareholders in Pennsylvania, where the company's security zippers were manufactured, and because of geographic ties and disagreements between Sundback and his bosses at Siemens.
Senbeck began researching improvements to the zipper in 1908, and worked day and night to find a way to make the teeth of the zipper fit together to prevent it from ripping open, and renamed the safety zipper the Plako zipper (patented in 1913 under patent No. 1060378, a design considered an important milestone in the introduction of the zipper). However, Sembeck's dream was not realized, the new product still had shortcomings, and many consumers wrote to complain.