Today, Google honours the inventor of the zip fastener, more commonly known in the common vernacular, as the zip (or zipper if you live on the other side of the pond that is The Atlantic. The Google Doodle shows an embroidered Google logo waiting expectantly for its tab to be pulled down…go on unzip Google, you know you want to. The inventor, Gideon Sundback (24 April 1880 to 21 June 1954) was a Swedish-American electrical engineer.
Sundback made several advances in the development of the zipper between 1906 and 1914 while working for companies that became Talon Inc. He built on work of Elias Howe, Max Wolff, and Whitcomb Judson and came up with a replacement for conventional hooks and eyes as clothing fasteners. A prototype had a tendency to pull apart too easily, but Sundback solved this problem in 1913 with his “Hookless Fastener No. 1”. The invention had two facing rows of teeth that pulled into a single piece using a slider…the first zip. Interlocking teeth came next with the “Hookless No. 2”, the modern metal zip.