The first person to attempt to reversibly connect two materials with a ziplike mechanism was the American inventor Elias Howe (1819-1867) in 1851 with his "Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure." However, Howe devoted little time to his fastening invention. A short while later, fellow-American Whitcomb Judson invented the clasp locker, primarily to help a friend who had a bad back and couldn't do up his shoes. The design was based around a hook-and-eye mechanism and had little commercial success. One of Judson's employees, however, went on to hit the jackpot.
Gideon Sundback (1880-1954) worked for Judson's Universal Fastener Company. Because of his great skill he was appointed as head designer. He had been tasked with improving the Judson hook-and-eye fastener, which had an unfortunate tendency to come apart. Sundback's breakthrough design was based on the principle of interlocking teeth, and he called his invention the "Hookless Fastener." It consisted of two rows effacing teeth that were interlocked with a slider, and he received a patent in 1913. Further improvements to his design resulted in the "Separable Fastener" in 1917. Sundback even developed a manufacturing machine for his new invention, which soon had the capacity to produce hundreds of feet of fastener every day. One of his first major customers was B. F. Goodrich, who used the fastener in his new line of shoes. Goodrich is credited with coining the term "zipper" for the device. Sundback's fastener also found great utility in tobacco pouches. But it was only two decades later that it entered the fashion industry and became the everyday object it is today.
