Gideon Sundback

Gideon Sundback was born on October 27, 1880, on Sonarp farm in Jönköping County, Sweden. After completing electrical engineering studies in Bingen am Rhein, Germany, in 1903, Sundback emigrated to the United States in 1905, joining the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh. In 1906, he was hired by the Universal Fastener Company in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Earlier inventors had attempted slide fasteners, but all were prone to jamming and popping open. Sundback applied scientific precision to the problem: between 1913 and 1914, he designed the 'Hookless No. 2', which increased the number of fastening elements from four to ten or eleven per inch, introducing two facing rows of scoop-and-dimple teeth that locked seamlessly when pulled by a slider. Granted U.S. Patent No. 1,219,881 on March 20, 1917, Sundback also designed the manufacturing machines that produced hundreds of feet of zipper daily. Popularized by B.F. Goodrich on rubber galoshes (coining the term 'zipper'), Sundback's invention was adopted by the U.S. military in WWI and became an indispensable pillar of global fashion. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.