Gideon Sundback has been remembered on his birthday today with a Google doodle that features a zipper across Google’s homepage that unzips a search query for ‘Gideon Sundback’. If you’re wondering why you should care about Sundback, imagine life without the zipper.
Swedish born Sundback immigrated to the United States in 1905, where he started work on the development of the zipper. From 1906 until 1914 he worked on a number of designs and advancements of the zipper before filing a patent for a design in 1917 (see below). Sundback came up with the word ‘zipper’, which is still used around the word today, almost 100 years on from the day it was patented.
According to 3D Car Shows, Sundback also invented the machine for the zipper’s production, which cut the chunks out of a special Y-shaped wire then punched the scoop dimple and nib. In its first year of operation, Sundback had the machine producing 100 metres of the zipper material per day.
Sundback died in 1954 and was buried at Greendale cemetery in Meadville, Pennsylvania, The Guardian reports.
Gideon Sundback’s 1917 Zipper Patent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Qt8CmBTMc
