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The story of the zipper is the triumph
of an ingenious novelty over the practical world. It is
almost impossible to imagine modern life without this device;
yet, for the first thirty years or so, from its patent in
the late nineteenth century, it represented no real advantage
over traditional fasteners like the hook-and-eye or the
old-fashioned button. The zipper was mechanically awkward,
liable to rust, liable to fail (i.e., snag or burst
open), and so expensive that it doubled the retail price
of a skirt or a pair of pants. But from the beginning the
zipper had an allure, a mystery, a kind of sex appeal that
would be echoed in songs, poems, and popular novels.
Robert Friedel has written a fascinating
history of this signature gadget of the twentieth century,
and the cast of characters is wonderfully appropriate to
a story so full of strange twists and paradoxes. Like many
inventions, and not a few great works of literature, the
zipper was the work of a man who thought he should have
been doing something else. Only a couple of Whitcomb Judson's
many patents pertained to the "Hookless Fastener";
the others had to do with a doomed undertaking known as
the Pneumatic Streetcar. Friedel takes us into the machine
shop where a brilliant Swedish engineer named Sundback wrestled
with Judson's invention, and into the correspondence between
Colonel Lewis Walker (booster and financial supporter of
the zipper for forty years) and Wilson Wear, aptly named
chief salesman for this interesting but impractical item.
This is a story full of unexpected pleasures
for the reader, and along the way we learn much about the
roles that invention and novelty play in our lives. There
are many reasons why the zipper should have failed:
instead, it has become one of the most potently symbolic
artifacts of our society.
Robert Friedel teaches the history of
technology and science at the University of Maryland, College
Park, and is a research associate and consultant at the
Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History.
In the past, he has served as historian at the Smithsonian
and director of the Center for the History of Electrical
Engineering in New York. He earned his Ph.D. at the Johns
Hopkins University, holds degrees from Brown University
and the University of London, and has taught and lectured
throughout the United States on the history of technology
and invention.
Friedel's books include two works on
the history of invention, Pioneer
Plastic and Edison's
Electric Light (with Paul B. Israel).
His articles have appeared in the magazines Science
84 and American
Heritage of Invention and Technology;
in addition, he has written and consulted for the National
Geographical Society and Time-Life Books.
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