<<Velcro was invented in 1957 by Swiss engineer Georges de
Mestral, who
also devised the name from the French words velours and croche'.
His
inspiration came from the way cockleburs stuck to his clothes
while
hiking in the mountains.
Very nice story and it seems to be true.>>
Not hiking, hunting, if Cecil is to be trusted. Hiking sounds much
more environmentally-friendly to the sensitive ears of the
politically-correct, so probably the tale has been modified along
the way:
"In 1941, George de Mestral and his Irish pointer were hunting
game birds in the ancient Jura mountains of Switzerland. All day
long, he had to pull off sticky cockleburs clinging to the dog's
coat and his own trousers. De Mestral marvelled at the tenacity of
these hitchhiking seedpods that were difficult to disentangle from
animal fur or woolen cloth. That evening, this Swiss engineer
placed a burr under a microscope and was stunned to see that the
exterior of the seedpod was covered with masses of tiny hooks that
acted like hundreds of grasping hands. De Mestral wondered whether
it would be possible to mimic nature and create a fastener for
fabric. When he succeeded he gave the creation a memorable name by
splicing together the first syllable of two French words: velour
(velvet) and crochet (hook): Velcro."
...it took De Mestral eight years to copy the burr-clasping
system. In 1952, he quit his engineer's job and got $150,000 in
loan to perfect the velcro concept. He experimented with nylon,
but he couldn't cut hooks out of nylon. At the end of his rope, he
went off to the mountains to clear his head. At a local barber
shop, he watched the cutting and sliding motions of the barber's
shears and was inspired.>>
[...]
<<Velcro was taken up by the aerospace industry as an aid to
getting in and out of bulky space suits. Unfortunately that just
reinforced the idea of limited utilitarian use. Only the makers of
children's clothing and sports apparel saw possibilities, watching
astronauts detach food pouches from walls and stand upright with
their boots linked to the floor in weightless space. David
Letterman put Velcro in the national spotlight when he attached
himself to a hook-and-loop wall (a two inch square piece of Velcro
will hold a 175 pound person hanging on a wall.)>>
More at:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mvelcro.html
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