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Welcome to stuff you missed in history class a production of I Heart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast I'm Holly for I and I'm Tracy V Wilson. So historian Robert Friedel wrote a book about zippers back in 1994.

I recently read an align in the introduction to that book really struck me which was while zippers are used everywhere they are almost never necessary and I recoiled initially I said we need zippers everywhere but really.

You could find an alternate way to do almost everything that a zipper does but they're so convenient and handy that of course they have become ubiquitous throughout everyone's wardrobes.

But without trying to throw anyone under the bus that quote is kind of how I feel about most right ups about the invention of the zipper because it's one of those things I of course so a lot so I have done a lot of thinking about zippers and how they work and wonder where they came from but if you look at any right up if you just you know do an internet search and say who invented the zipper you get to maybe three paragraphs and it's really really glossing over a lot of stuff.

There's a lot of story here so I thought today might be a good time to delve into the oddly arduous creation of this simple thing that we almost all have on our clothes and our handbags and our luggage etc zippers now that I think about it they are in so many locations yes besides just my jeans.

In 1851 Elias how who we talked about forever ago in our sewing machine episode filed for a patent on an automatic continuous clothing closure if you look at the patent sketches it really looks like a zipper but it's also a little misleading his device which he described as a series of clasps united by a connecting cord was really more like a spiral drawstring that was pre-laced.

Through clasps on either side of that opening that needed to be closed so when you pulled on the drawstring it pulled the two sides together and close it up.

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