Velcro is a brand of versatile fastening devices, known as hook-and-loop fasteners, hook-and-pile fasteners, or touch fasteners, that allow two surfaces to be repeatedly attached and detached with ease. A trademark of Velcro Companies, the brand name is often used generically to refer to this type of fastener. Invented in the mid-20th century, it is widely used in clothing, accessories, and various industrial and consumer applications. The fastener consists of two complementary components: one with tiny hooks and the other with soft loops. When pressed together, the hooks catch the loops, creating a secure but temporary bond. The fasteners can be separated by peeling or pulling the surfaces apart, often producing a distinctive ripping sound.
History
The original hook-and-loop fastener was conceived in 1941 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral, which he named velcro. The word Velcro is a portmanteau of two French words: "velours" meaning velvet, and "crochet" meaning hook. The idea came to him one day after he returned from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. He took a close look at the burs of burdock that kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur. He examined them under a microscope, and noted their hundreds of hooks that caught on anything with a loop, such as clothing, animal fur, or hair. He saw the possibility of binding two materials reversibly in a simple fashion if he could figure out how to duplicate the hooks and loops. Hook-and-loop is regarded by some like Steven Vogel or Werner Nachtigall as a key example of inspiration from nature or the copying of nature's mechanisms (called bionics or biomimesis).
The big breakthrough de Mestral made was to think about hook-and-eye closures on a greatly reduced scale. Hook-and-eye fasteners have been common for centuries, but what was new about hook-and-loop fasteners was the miniaturisation of the hooks and eyes. Shrinking the hooks led to the two other important differences. First, instead of a single-file line of hooks, hook-and-loop fasteners have a two-dimensional surface. This was needed, because reducing the size of the hooks also reduced the strength, requiring more hooks for the same strength. The other difference is that hook-and-loop has indeterminate match-up between the hooks and eyes. With larger hook-and-eye fasteners, each hook has its own eye. On a scale as small as that of hook-and-loop fasteners, matching up each of these hooks with the corresponding eye is impractical, thus leading to the indeterminate matching. De Mestral's proposal was initially rejected by industry leaders when he took his idea to Lyon, which was then a center of weaving. He did manage to gain the assistance of one weaver, who produced two cotton strips based on de Mestral's designs. But because the cotton frayed and wore out relatively quickly, de Mestral began to investigate the use of synthetic fibers, believing that they would provide a more resilient product. De Mestral eventually selected nylon, on the reasoning that it does not easily fray or attract mold, is non-biodegradable, and could be produced in threads of varying thickness. Nylon had only recently been invented, and through trial and error de Mestral eventually discovered that, when sewn under hot infrared light, nylon forms small hook shapes. However, he had yet to figure out a way to mechanize the process and to make the looped side. Next he found that nylon thread, when woven in loops and heat-treated, retains its shape and is resilient; however, the loops had to be cut in just the right spot so that they could be fastened and unfastened many times. On the verge of giving up, he had a new idea: he bought a pair of shears and trimmed the tops off the loops, thus creating hooks that would match up with the loops in the pile. Mechanizing the process of weaving the hooks took eight years, and it took another year to create the loom that trimmed the loops after weaving them. In all, it took ten years to create a mechanized process that worked. De Mestral submitted his idea for a patent in Switzerland in 1951, which was granted in 1955. Within a few years he obtained patents and began to open shops in Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada. In 1957 he branched out to the textile center of Manchester, New Hampshire in the United States. Columnist Sylvia Porter made the first mention of the product in her column Your Money's Worth of August 25, 1958, writing, "It is with understandable enthusiasm that I give you today an exclusive report on this news: A 'zipperless zipper' has been invented – finally. The new fastening device is in many ways potentially more revolutionary than was the zipper a quarter-century ago." A Montreal firm, Velek, Ltd., acquired the exclusive right to market the product in North and South America, as well as in Japan, with American Velcro, Inc. of New Hampshire, and Velcro Sales of New York, marketing the "zipperless zipper" in the United States. De Mestral obtained patents in many countries right after inventing the fasteners, as he expected an immediate high demand. Owing partly to its cosmetic appearance, though, hook-and-loop's integration into the textile industry took time. At the time, the fasteners looked as though they had been made from leftover bits of cheap fabric, and thus were not sewn into clothing or used widely when it debuted in the early 1960s. It was also regarded as impractical.
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