Who Invented the Zipper?

In 1893, a man in Chicago named Whitcomb Judson got tired of lacing and unlacing his boots; he wanted to find a better way to fasten them.

So he designed a device with interlocking metal teeth and attached them to boots. The boots themselves became known as zippers. But later, the word came to mean the fasteners themselves, and not the boots.

At first, Zippers were used only on boots, tobacco pouches, and mailbags. It wasn't until the 1930s that zippers began to appear on ordinary clothing!

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