Thursday, October 06, 2011

Zippers Zippers ZIPPERS


Do you ever muse on strange things when you are stressed out? Do things suddenly become fascinating that you have never considered before?

My stress level is up to my eyebrows this week, and while sitting in a teacher-training conference at BYU—suddenly--the most fascinating thing on earth was the zipper on my hoodie!

Zippers, zippers, zippers ZIPPERS! Who invented them? Who came up with such an ingenious idea? Who thought of making little metal rivets to sew into clothing to keep it together?

What a fascinating sound zippers make as they go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN.

How curious that you can bend a zipper back and forth and back and forth and it neither breaks nor comes undone!

Curriculum design, what? WHAT? Ooooppppsss.

Zippers: In 1851 Elias Howe (according to Wikipedia) invented the first zipper, but didn’t market it. He was too excited about the sewing machine. A million other things happened and then in the 1930s the B. F. Goodrich Company made zippers popular with their wonderful rubber boots. Who knew? Zippers as we know them in clothing didn’t become popular and normal until 1937 when the French (of course) thought they would be a wonderful addition to men’s trousers.

And there you have it!

2 comments:

JMadd said...

Zippers are a bugger to sew into a garment.

Relaxed Cat said...

I love zippers!