Sundback
Name: Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback
Achievements: The zipper.
Born: April 24, 1880; Odestugu, Jonkoping Province, Sweden
Died: 1954; USA (Aged 74)
Field & Discipline: Engineering; Invention
Education: Bingen Polytechnic Institute, Germany (1900-1903)
Life & Times:
Gideon Sundback began work as an engineering-drawings tracer for the [worked for] Westinghouse* Electric and Manufacturing Company in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Sundback arrived in the winter of 1904.After about six months Sundback was promoted to the position of draftsman, in which he remained for a year longer.
Meanwhile, during vacations he visited various Swedish communities in the United States, including that at Hoboken, New Jersey. During his visit to Hoboken in the summer of 1906, Sundback met Peter Aronson, an engineer working for the Automatic Hook and Eye Company, then producing the final design by the inventor Whitcomb L. Judson for his prototype zipper, known as the steel C-curity Slide Fastener. Aronson was looking for an engineer to deal with design and production problems and offered Sundback a job.
In 1912, after six years' work attempting to improve the slide fastener, Sundback at last came up with the solution to the problem, a new type of fastener which substituted spring clips in place of hooks and eyes, and could be produced by automatic machinery (which he also designed) rather than by a labour-intensive assembly-line.
In 1913 Sundback received the patent for his “Hookless No. 2", and a new company, the Hookless Fastener Company, was organized to manufacture both the machinery and thefasteners at Meadville, Pennsylvania.With this new slide fastener - which consisted of two strips of material with rounded clips on either side, sprung and locked together by the upward movement of the sliding piece, and apart by a corresponding downward movement - the fortunes of the company were made.
In 1917 the U.S. Navy agreed to equip windproof flying suits with Sundback's new slide fasteners, and in 1924 the company started getting large orders from the U.S. Army. In the late 1920s and early 1930s slide fasteners also began to appear on fashionable clothing for both men and women.By the mid-20th century, the zipper had been further refined and was, like the modern version, composed of two strips of material with metal or plastic teeth along the edges, and a sliding piece that draws the teeth into interlocking position when moved in one direction, and separates them again when moved in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, in 1924 Sundback sold his shares in the Hookless Fastener Company and for the next decade he worked as a consultant engineer, while retaining his interest in the manufacture and sale of the fastener abroad.He retired in the late 1930s.
Assessment: Created one of the most ubiquitous inventions of the modern world.
Oneliner: Gideon Sundbach, inventor of the zipper
Language: Swedish; English
Father: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
Siblings: Unknown
Spouse: Elvira Aronson (m. 1909)
Children: Unknown
Bibliography:
- Benson, Adolph B. & Naboth Hedin,Swedes in America, 1638-1938,New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1938.
- Encyclopedia Britannica.
- Friedel, Robert,Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty, New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1994.