did you know...
Zippers were first used in men's trousers in 1937?

It was a long way up for the humble zipper, the mechanical wonder that has kept so much in our lives 'together’.

* Elias Howe, who invented the sewing machine received a patent in 1851 for an 'automatic, continuous clothing closure’. * Howe was born in Spencer, Massachusetts on July 9, 1819. After lossing his factory job in 1837, he moved from Spencer to Boston, where he found work in a machinist's shop.

* Fortyfour years later, Whitcomb Judson inventor of the Pneumatic Street Railway marketed a 'clasp locker', a device similar to the 1851 Howe patent. As Whitcomb was the first to market his invention, he got the credit for being the inventor of the zipper. The clasp locker was a complicated hook-and-eye shoe fastener. Together with businessman Colonel Lewis Walker, Whitcomb launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture the new device.

* The popular 'zipper' name came from the B. F. Goodrich Company, which renamed the device the zipper when they decided to use it on a new type of rubber boots or galoshes. At first, zippers were mainly used in boots and tobacco pouches.

* About 20 years later, the fashion industry decided to promote the use of zippers on garments. A 1930 sales campaign for children's clothing praised zippers for promoting self-reliance in young children by making it possible for them to dress without help.

* The zipper beat the button in 1937 when French fashion designers used zippers in men's trousers.

— Compiled by Gaurav Sood