Velcro
Next time the rrrriippp sound of a Velcro fastener gets on your nerves, take it up with your dog.
Back in the early 1940s, Swiss inventor George de Mestral decided to take his loyal dog for a walk. Mestral’s dog, as dogs are wont to do, led his master through some brambles and brush. Upon returning home, Mestral discovered that both the dog and his trousers were covered with prickly burrs.
A lesser man might simply have thrown his trousers in the corner and shaved the dog, but Mestral was a Swiss inventor, and took his responsibility to science seriously. Studying the burrs under his microscope, Mestral discovered that the secret of a burr’s dogged stickiness lay in the tiny hook at the tip of each of its little spines that grabbed and held tight to the loops of thread in Mestral’s trousers.
Mimicking nature, Mestral then designed a reusable fastening system with two sides: one with tiny hooks like the burr, the other with plenty of fabric loops like his trousers. The resulting product was dubbed “Velcro,” combining the French velours (velvet) with croche (hooked).
Manufacturing Velcro turned out to be a tricky business, and it took quite a while to get the technology of making those tiny hooks just right, but today Velcro, manufactured by Velcro Industries B.V., is used in thousands of products, including, of course, dog coats.
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