The invention: A material comprising millions of tiny hooks and loops that work together to create powerful and easy-to-use fasteners for a wide range of applications.
The person behind the invention: Georges de Mestral (1904-1990), a Swiss engineer and inventor
From Cockleburs to Fasteners
Since prehistoric times, people have walked through weedy fields and arrived at home with cockleburs all over their clothing. In 1948, a Swiss engineer and inventor, Georges de Mestral, found his clothing full of cockleburs after walking in the Swiss Alps near Geneva. Wondering why cockleburs stuck to clothing, he began to examine them under a microscope. De Mestral’s initial examination showed that each of the thousands of fibrous ends of the cockleburs was tipped with a tiny hook; it was the hooks that made the cockleburs stick to fabric. This observation, combined with much subsequent work, led de Mestral to invent velcro, which was patented in 1957 in the form of two strips of nylon material. One of the strips contained millions of tiny hooks, while the other contained a similar number of tiny loops. When the two strips were pushed together, the hooks were inserted into the loops, joining the two strips of nylon very firmly. This design makes velcro extremely useful as a material for fasteners that is used in applications ranging from sneaker fasteners to fasteners used to join heart valves during surgery.
Making Velcro Practical
Velcro is not the only invention credited to de Mestral, who also invented such items as a toy airplane and an asparagus peeler, but it was his greatest achievement. It is said that his idea for the material was partly the result of a problem his wife had with a jammed dress zipper just before an important social engagement. De Mestral’s idea was to design a sort of locking tape that used the hook-and-loop principle that he had observed under the microscope. Such a tape, he believed, would never jam. He also believed that the tape would do away with such annoyances as buttons that popped open unexpectedly and knots in shoelaces that refused to be untied.
The design of the material envisioned by de Mestral took seven years of painstaking effort. When it was finished, de Mestral named it “velcro” (a contraction of the French phrase velvet crochet, meaning velvet hook), patented it, and opened a factory to manufacture it. Velcro’s design required that de Mestral identify the optimal number of hooks and loops to be used. He eventually found that using approximately three hundred per square inch worked best. In addition, his studies showed that nylon was an excellent material for his purposes, although it had to be stiffened somewhat to work well. Much additional experimentation showed that the most effective way of producing the necessary stiffening was to subject the velcro to infrared light after manufacturing it.
Other researchers have demonstrated that velcrolike materials need not be made of nylon. For example, a new micromechanical velcrolike material (microvelcro) that medical researchers believe will soon be used to hold together blood vessels after surgery is made of minute silicon loops and hooks. This material is thought to be superior to other materials for such applications because it will not be redissolved prematurely by the body. Other uses for micro-velcro may be to hold together tiny electronic components in miniaturized computers without the use of glue or other adhesives. Ama-jor advantage of the use of microvelcro in such situations is that it is resistant to changes of temperature as well as to most chemicals that destroy glue and other adhesives.
Impact
In 1957, when velcro was patented, there were four main ways to hold things together. These involved the use of buttons, laces, snaps, and zippers (which had been invented by Chicagoan Whitcomb L. Judson in 1892). All these devices had drawbacks; zippers can jam, buttons can come open at embarrassing times, and shoelaces can form knots that are difficult to unfasten. Almost immediately after velcro was introduced, its use became widespread; velcro fasteners can be found on or in clothing, shoes, watchbands, wallets, back-
Georges de Mestral
Georges de Mestral got his idea for Velcro in part during a hunting trip on his estates and in part before an important formal social function. These contexts are evidence of the high standing in Swiss society held by de Mestral, an engineer and manufacturer. In fact, de Mestral, who was born in 1904, came from a illustrious line of noble landowners. Their prize possession was one of Switzerland’s famous residences, the castle of Saint Saphorin on Morges.
Built on the site of yet older fortifications, the castle was completed by Frangois-Louis de Pesme in 1710. An enemy of King Louis XIV, de Pesme served in the military forces of Austria, Holland, and England, rising to the rank of lieutenant general, but he is best known for driving off a Turkish invasion fleet on the Danube in 1695. Other forebears include the diplomat Armand- Frangois Louis de Mestral (1738-1805) and his father, Albert-Georges-Constantin de Mestral (1878-1966), an agricultural engineer.
The castle passed to the father’s four sons and eventually into the care of the inventor. It in turn was inherited by Georges de Mestral’s sons Henri and Frangois when he died in 1990 in Genolier, Switzerland.
packs, topic bags, motor vehicles, space suits, blood-pressure cuffs, and in many other places. There is even a “wall jumping” game incorporating velcro in which a wall is covered with a well-supported piece of velcro. People who want to play put on jackets made of velcro and jump as high as they can. Wherever they land on the wall, the velcro will join together, making them stick.
Wall jumping, silly though it may be, demonstrates the tremendous holding power of velcro; a velcro jacket can keep a two-hundred-pound person suspended from a wall. This great strength is used in a more serious way in the design of the items used to anchor astronauts to space shuttles and to buckle on parachutes. In addition, velcro is washable, comes in many colors, and will not jam. No doubt many more uses for this innovative product will be found.
See also Artificial heart.
