Zippers

Zippers are the most common machine all around us. But it's a minor miracle how that came to be. Pictures of early zippers and other links at articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Avery Trufelman?

  I wanted to talk about zippers. May I just ask you some quick questions about zippers?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:07Avery Trufelman?

  Is that a weird thing to ask about?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Well, nobody else really asks about zippers.

• 0:14Avery Trufelman?

  So, so you are Amish, right?

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, there's different types of Amish.

• 0:22Avery Trufelman?

  Lydia is Old Order Amish, but then there's also New Order Amish.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  New Order Amish, we would have the zippers, actually, and we don't.

• 0:30Avery Trufelman?

  Why don't you wear zippers?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I guess because years ago, they, the older people, didn't wear zippers. Too modern, I guess, for us, or something.

• 0:42Avery Trufelman?

  But this is the part that confused me. Even though zippers were too modern, here we were, talking on the phone.

• 0:50Avery Trufelman?

  Granted, many members of Lydia's community keep their cellphones outside of their home, actually, in a box, as though it's an outhouse, and Lydia only has access to a flip phone.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  And I do not know how to use a smartphone.

• 1:03Avery Trufelman?

  Still, I did not understand how zippers were considered more modern, more of a disruption, than talking on the phone.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Because I have to have this phone. Actually, the phones are more, how should I say? More advanced than what they used to be.

• 1:19Avery Trufelman?

  In my ignorance, knowing pretty much nothing about the Amish, I assumed they were wholeheartedly devoting to just being frozen in time, as dedicated to being as simple as possible, and living a completely pre-industrial agrarian lifestyle. But that is not the whole story.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  We're humans like everybody else, and things change is the best way for me to explain it.

• 1:44Avery Trufelman?

  Ruth, another member of the Amish community, told me that she will, for example, ride in a car.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  We drive in other people's cars, but we don't drive our own. We don't have license and we're not to be driving.

• 1:57Avery Trufelman?

  Huh, it's like living in New York City. That's what I do. A number of Amish have even decided that owning and riding e-bikes is totally okay, and Ruth sews on a sewing machine. How high-tech are you allowed to get with the sewing machines?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  We go

• 2:13Avery Trufelman?

  Really?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:15Avery Trufelman?

  All technologies aren't all entirely frowned upon. Some of the ones that have proven really valuable, really helpful for life have become adopted, and it's different for different sects and different communities, even for different individuals.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  Well, you have to allow some people, if you, if we all look like cookie cutters, it'll be a cult.

• 2:35Avery Trufelman?

  And so, when it comes to zippers, there isn't actually any official stated doctrine in the Amish community.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  I guess the best place for you to call would be the Amish Mennonite Heritage Center. Maybe they'll have some answers for you on that.

• 2:52Avery Trufelman?

  Okay.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  The news media. And movies, and even the written material about Amish. It's a line of BS, sorry.

• 3:00Avery Trufelman?

  Really?

• 3:00Speaker 03

  It's just all BS. This is my work. This is what I do. I work with my people.

• 3:05Avery Trufelman?

  Marcus Yoder is the executive director of the Bahalt Amish and Mennonite Center. He was raised in this community, went out and got degrees from Ohio State and Yale, and then he came back. So he has one foot in the world of the Amish, and he has the other foot in our world, the world of the English.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  So even there, in calling anyone who isn't Amish "English," it's cultural, it's about language.

• 3:30Avery Trufelman?

  May I hear what Amish sounds like? How would you say he started wearing zipper pants in Amish?

• 3:37Speaker 03

  "Atchad Sippelhosavada." It's a guy like a German.

• 3:40Avery Trufelman?

  So with his intimate knowledge of the community and the distinct advantage of being able to email, Marcus helped me out.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  On Monday night, I had 444 Amish people here, all Amish.

• 3:51Avery Trufelman?

  Wow.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  I actually asked them, I said, "Why do you not like zippers in clothing?" They rubbed their beards a little bit. I think an important thing for people to understand is they're thinking, "What will it do to our historic faith? What will it do to our families?"

• 4:06Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, it's zippers, come on.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  I know.

• 4:11Avery Trufelman?

  Essentially, every new technology has to be carefully considered for its effects on the entire community. The e-bikes are a perfect example.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  When they're wrestling with e-bikes, they begin to say, "What will this do to our families? If we get cars, we know that it will probably fracture our families. Because mom and grandma, and we won't have dinner together, we won't do things together."

• 4:35Avery Trufelman?

  E-bikes, however, can't go the full distance of a car. They can be practical for getting around, but they still keep families in range of each other. So that's why some communities permit them.

• 4:45Speaker 03

  So if faith is the kind of first deep unstuck and faith is there, the commitment to family is almost equal in weight.

• 4:53Avery Trufelman?

  So what would zippers do to their families and their communities? This is what one Amish man told Marcus.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  If you allow zippers, then you're going to begin to wrestle with fashion again. Like, you're going to go out, and you're going to get a jacket, your hair has to wear his older, overcoated buttons.

• 5:11Avery Trufelman?

  Why would it be worth it to stoke the desire for new clothes?

• 5:15Speaker 03

  We eliminate a whole set of decisions that we have to make.

• 5:19Avery Trufelman?

  It is just easier for the whole community to remain with what they have. And for their parts, Lydia and Ruth do not mind. It is not a problem for them to go without zippers.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  We don't use a lot of zippers. It's not the first thing that we go for.

• 5:33Avery Trufelman?

  So what do you use instead?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Either buttons or snaps.

• 5:37Avery Trufelman?

  Most Amish dresses are just pullover with no buttons or snaps or zippers at all.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  I just strip it over my head, just like I would a t-shirt or something like that.

• 5:47Avery Trufelman?

  I can see how this would be manageable. Looking down at my own outfit right now, I am wearing a button-down shirt and drawstring pants. There's not a zipper in sight for me today. Is that ever annoying? Like, when you're buttoning all the buttons, do you ever wish you could just zip?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Well, sometimes I get disgusted.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  With zippers because it doesn't want to work. Now, if they can work, they're fine, but yeah, sometimes they don't want to work very well.

• 6:14Avery Trufelman?

  It's a good point. When a zipper doesn't want to work, the whole garment goes on strike. Like, do you recall when Emma Stone won an Oscar in 2024? This is how she began her acceptance speech.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Oh, boy. My dress is broken.

• 6:30Avery Trufelman?

  The zipper on her strapless dress broke. Can you imagine? You just won an Oscar and that is the first thing on your mind? That is so dangerously close to a nightmare. And there's no way to fix it. You can't fix a zipper other than cutting the zipper out and putting a new zipper back in. It's not like a button where you can just sew it right there in the moment. Also, as a fledgling sewist, I find sewing zippers quite intimidating.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  It just takes more talent to put a zipper in a piece of clothing than it does to go without.

• 6:58Avery Trufelman?

  So Lydia and Ruth and many other Amish reason, why not just go without zippers? And meanwhile, for the rest of us, the zipper is the most common machine in our lives. We don't think of it as a machine, but that is what it is. It's a machine that is everywhere and we accept it. And yet we do not actually need it at all. It is technically superfluous. And for that reason, it took such a long time after the invention of the zipper for it to actually get used.

• 7:41Avery Trufelman?

  The adoption and proliferation of the zipper is an extremely unlikely story. And so truly, the question that is more confusing than why the Amish never accepted zippers is why we, the English, ever did.

• 8:00Avery Trufelman?

  After the break.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020 discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, whose star on The West Wing is Will Bailey, and Rishi Kesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 8:51Avery Trufelman?

  The internet can be a confusing, cacophonous place, especially when you're trying to figure out anything about clothes. There's so many branded, partnered sponsorship, fake reviews. It's really hard to know what's real and what's not. But the true forum for the internet is and always has been Reddit. What do you wear to work? What do you wear to move to a new place, or a pregnancy, or a new stage of life? The place to turn to is Reddit. When it comes to clothing, you need to talk to people. You need someone with a body, with arms and legs, who moves through the world and understands particular contexts. Reddit can help you understand clothes in the context of real bodies, real lives, and the way clothing operates in the world. That's why I turn to my favorite subreddit, r/buyitforlife. If I'm thinking of making the investment in an expensive

• 9:36Avery Trufelman?

  piece, I want to find out from other people who've already tried it before me what it's really like. I want to know what happens after 30 wares, three washes, one unfortunate coffee incident, a full year in someone's closet. I want the full rundown, complete with photos of the fraying, the repairs, and the surprise winners. This subreddit has very strong opinions about stitching, and I respect it. On Reddit, find fashion advice built for real bodies, real budgets, and real lives. Download the Reddit app today. The glasses are green, the color of sea glass, you could say. They are exactly my husband's prescription. They have blue light blocking technology for his computer time, and they were $30. I got them at Zenni. Zenni is an online eyewear shop with so many stylish glasses,

• 10:21Avery Trufelman?

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• 11:02Avery Trufelman?

  That's Z E N N I dot com slash podcast, promo code PODCAST15. Zenni.com slash podcast, code PODCAST15.

• 11:16Avery Trufelman?

  Why did Judson Whitcomb come up with the zipper?

• 11:20Speaker 06

  Well, it's Whitcomb Judson.

• 11:22Avery Trufelman?

  Whitcomb Judson, sorry.

• 11:25Speaker 06

  That's okay. I knew that was a trick question, wasn't it? Right, thanks.

• 11:29Avery Trufelman?

  That's right, I totally meant to do that, yes. Professor Robert Friedel is so charming. I really like this guy.

• 11:35Speaker 06

  I'm Robert Friedel. I am a historian of technology and science.

• 11:40Avery Trufelman?

  Professor Friedel wrote a book simply called Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty.

• 11:46Speaker 06

  But the nature of invention has always been my key interest. I'm just really, really fascinated by why people invent things, how they invent things, and what they do with things once they've invented them.

• 12:01Avery Trufelman?

  And Whitcomb Judson wanted to invent stuff because he wanted to invent stuff.

• 12:07Speaker 06

  He feels that to be an inventor is the greatest thing anybody could ever be. And this is the generation right after Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. And they're still around. They're still very famous. And we can judge and want to speculate about what can I do to become a great inventor? And he invents a whole host of stupid things. Oh, I shouldn't say that, but largely stupid things.

• 12:34Avery Trufelman?

  You can imagine Judson amassing a workshop full of wild contraptions for novelty things that no one had asked for or needed. You had this great turn of phrase. You said it wasn't problem solving, it was problem seeking.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  Right. He just wanted to be an inventor and this is what he came up with.

• 12:53Avery Trufelman?

  In 1891, Judson makes the early, early precursor to what would one day become the zipper, but it looks nothing like the zipper.

• 13:00Speaker 06

  This automatic hook and eye.

• 13:03Avery Trufelman?

  It's a very complicated contraption that hooks a series of spikes into a series of big round metal hoops.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  He said, now I've got it. I've got something that I'm sure will work.

• 13:15Avery Trufelman?

  It did not work.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  The notion of the automatic hook and eye, bringing hook together with eyes and making it somehow mechanical, which by the way is an intrinsically bad idea, but okay, trying to make that.

• 13:28Avery Trufelman?

  You mean just because it's so dangerous?

• 13:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, not well. We won't even go there.

• 13:33Avery Trufelman?

  Sure.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  But just because it's mechanically stupid. I'm sorry.

• 13:38Avery Trufelman?

  It was a clunky device that truly no one had been looking for.

• 13:42Speaker 06

  Buttons work fine. Snaps work fine. They're all cheaper. They're all simpler. They're all very familiar to us. We haven't been sitting around complaining about them.

• 13:56Avery Trufelman?

  The task then for salesmen of the automatic hook and eye is getting people to jettison buttons and snaps, things that are familiar, reliable, cheap, and good, in favor of something expensive, clunky, and ultimately not very good at its one job.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  That takes salesmanship up to the first order. Which is why it takes decades of very persistent, sometime clever kind of salesmanship to make the thing go.

• 14:23Avery Trufelman?

  Who are they supplying at this point? Like, who's buying this stuff?

• 14:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, the the shockers out there, really. I mean, I can't describe you many better. They're basically wonderful, fast-talking, hustling salesmen out there who are going literally from town to town, buying a few dozen of these things, which I emphasize, nobody is looking for. Okay, really.

• 14:48Avery Trufelman?

  They sell to some home sellers, maybe some general stores, if anyone, just like, "Try this instead of buttons."

• 14:54Speaker 06

  And the ones that are really successful make a real point of never coming back to the same town twice.

• 15:02Speaker 06

  Because their devices really don't work very well. But apparently, that is enough to keep this little factory in Hoboken going. Just enough so that they don't just throw in the towel.

• 15:14Avery Trufelman?

  And I cannot emphasize enough how long this period goes on. This era of the shitty, somewhat scammy, automatic hook and eye lasts for 20 years.

• 15:26Speaker 06

  It took about 20 years from Judson's first design until we get the design that we know of at a shipper. Think of how much longer that is than, say, the Wright brothers took to invent an airplane, you know? 20 years is a long time.

• 15:43Avery Trufelman?

  The airplane took four years.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  The commitment of these people is such that they keep pushing.

• 15:50Avery Trufelman?

  But Whitcomb Judson himself was never an engineer. He was an inventor guy. He had other ideas. So Judson moves on.

• 15:57Speaker 06

  By the first years of the 20th century, he's beginning to fade out.

• 16:02Avery Trufelman?

  So Judson gets older. He has other inventions. He moves on. He leaves New Jersey. He passes on the technical direction of his factory to a man named Peter Aronson. Just remember that last name, Aronson. That's going to be important in this next part.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  And then we have a breakthrough 20 years after the first effort.

• 16:25Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, 20 years into the strange story of the invention that will become the zipper is a breakthrough. And at its heart is a love story.

• 16:36Speaker 06

  Gideon Sundback is a wonderful story from start to finish.

• 16:40Avery Trufelman?

  I love it. Gideon Sundback is a brilliant, young Swedish engineer.

• 16:45Speaker 06

  We forgot that in the early 20th century, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe. There was really not a lot of opportunity for a well-trained person.

• 16:57Avery Trufelman?

  Sundback comes to the United States.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  He finds a Swedish-American community, if you want to be romantic about it, within the site of the Statue of Liberty in Hoboken. Hoboken happened to be where the automatic hook-and-eye factory is. And they need an engineer. And Gideon Sundback is not actually interested.

• 17:19Avery Trufelman?

  Of course, he was not really into this scammy, down-on-its-luck, 20-year-old company, still trying to sell automatic hook-and-eye fasteners that didn't really work.

• 17:28Speaker 06

  He's looking more for something in the electrical business. That's really the cutting edge. That's the future. And this is around 1900, 1905, that sort of thing.

• 17:37Avery Trufelman?

  But Gideon checks it out. He goes to the automatic hook-and-eye factory, and he does get automatically hooked.

• 17:45Avery Trufelman?

  He sees the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

• 17:50Speaker 06

  Peter Aaron's daughter, Elvira.

• 17:53Avery Trufelman?

  And Gideon is like, who is she?

• 17:57Speaker 06

  And he is totally smitten. I mean, boy, did he have it bad, okay? So he basically says, sure, I'll join up. Let's see what I can do.

• 18:10Avery Trufelman?

  And so Gideon Sunback suddenly finds himself in the automatic hook and eye business. He's in this busted novelty company, which he really would have only joined for love.

• 18:21Speaker 06

  And he beats his head against the wall for years trying to get this device, which as I said, has some really intrinsic flaws in it to work.

• 18:32Avery Trufelman?

  So Sunback comes up with a new version around 1908 called the Playco. It still puts hooks through loops, although the loops are smaller and closer now, but essentially it still sucks. I mean, Professor Friedel showed me one of the early instruction manuals, and yes, the Playco needed instructions.

• 18:49Speaker 06

  Look at this.

• 18:50Avery Trufelman?

  They're so...

• 18:51Speaker 06

  Didn't tell you. And the direction for using go on for several paragraphs.

• 18:56Avery Trufelman?

  Totally.

• 18:57Speaker 06

  Okay. So this is a wonderful illustration of the fact that this really is not a good idea.

• 19:05Avery Trufelman?

  You had to take the Playco fastener off when you wanted to wash a garment. Otherwise, it would get rust into the whole laundry. It was a really clunky device still.

• 19:15Speaker 06

  And the vast talking salesman run around the country selling Playco fasteners.

• 19:20Avery Trufelman?

  We consider it the greatest invention of the age, and so does everyone else who has examined it or tested its merit by actual use. Sales material said.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  And that keeps the company going on a very small scale, but steady enough.

• 19:32Avery Trufelman?

  And in early advertisements for the Playco, skirts, gloves, and boots were modeled by the beautiful, smiling Elvira Aronson.

• 19:44Speaker 06

  Elvira and Gideon get married in Hoboken.

• 19:48Avery Trufelman?

  Gideon had officially married into the business.

• 19:51Speaker 06

  Elvira and Gideon are married for a few years.

• 19:55Avery Trufelman?

  Elvira becomes pregnant.

• 19:56Speaker 06

  It all looks lovely, and the factory is plugging along, but...

• 20:02Speaker 06

  The salesmen are running out of gullible people.

• 20:05Avery Trufelman?

  So Sundback really needs to get to work on this Playco thing. He's very invested in this now. He's like, I'm about to have a family to support.

• 20:12Speaker 06

  He obviously knows the failings of the device.

• 20:15Avery Trufelman?

  But he's like, OK, what can I actually do to make this thing work?

• 20:18Speaker 06

  The picture that we get is Gideon Sundback plugging away in his little workshop in Hoboken, where it takes a lot of effort just to keep the machinery going for this device.

• 20:31Avery Trufelman?

  OK, what can I do to make this thing good?

• 20:34Speaker 06

  But then there's a very tragic element of a story that steps in, tragic and romantic.

• 20:40Avery Trufelman?

  When Elvira gives birth to their daughter, Ruth, Elvira barely survives childbirth.

• 20:47Speaker 06

  And only a few days later, she dies. And you can imagine that this is a tragedy of the first order for Gideon.

• 20:57Avery Trufelman?

  Gideon was, in fact, so distraught, he could hardly face his own newborn daughter. When Gideon is mourning the loss of his wife, he sends his daughter away back to Sweden.

• 21:11Speaker 06

  In his despondency, he basically threw himself back into his workshop.

• 21:18Avery Trufelman?

  In his despair, Gideon Sundback fixated on this fastener. I imagine him sort of half crazed, his shirt sleeves rolled up, seeking one modicum of control, just one way to make something right, because he had ended up here for her. All of this was for Elvira. He wasn't going to just leave it all behind. It wasn't going to be for naught. It was going to work, dammit.

• 21:48Speaker 06

  He looked back at the Playco, and he realizes that one of the reasons why the earlier fastener didn't work is that the...

• 21:56Speaker 06

  Individual element, the hooks and eyes, were too large. And there were too few of them.

• 22:03Avery Trufelman?

  There are these big gaps between each loop. So if one got undone, which it did easily, then there was this big hole. So Sundback thought.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  Now, if I could make teensy tiny teeny weeny hooks and eyes, I might try that. But that's pretty much impossible.

• 22:17Avery Trufelman?

  So Sundback throws away the hook and loop design altogether. No hooks, no loops.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  He then comes up with the key idea, which is basically the scoop.

• 22:27Avery Trufelman?

  There are lots of ways a modern zipper works, but one of the ways that we still use that Sundback came up with.

• 22:33Speaker 06

  You'll need a magnifying glass for this.

• 22:35Avery Trufelman?

  Is that scoops fit into nibs.

• 22:38Speaker 06

  It will stay fashioned, even when it's flat, even when it tied in the knots. It's an astonishing design.

• 22:45Avery Trufelman?

  Sundback did it. He cracked it. And so he announced the name of his new device.

• 22:52Speaker 06

  The Hookless Hooker.

• 22:54Avery Trufelman?

  The Hookless Hooker. That's its full name. That's what the zipper was called. So is it fair to say that the Hookless Hooker is the same invention that would become the zipper? That is. But that nickname, zipper, hasn't happened yet. So the company's name is changed to the Hookless Fastener Company and it introduces the improved design of the Hookless Hooker around 1915. And this hooker is expensive.

• 23:18Speaker 06

  Now, 35 cents may not sound like much, but you could buy a perfectly decent shirt for 35 cents. Okay? So it's an expensive proposition.

• 23:28Avery Trufelman?

  The salespeople for the Hookless Hooker are continuing to have a preposterously hard time, even though this device actually works now.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  And so they talk about going into the department store, they talk about going to the tailor, leaving two or three, oh, can I get you to try it? And the tailor will come back to them and say, look, that takes me five times as much time to put in, as a set of buttons does. It cost me five times as much to purchase and I haven't got anybody who's asking for it. So you can see what a difficult sales job they had.

• 24:01Avery Trufelman?

  Also, even if this is an objectively interesting and good Good invention. Ultimately, it has to do with clothing and accessories, which means it has to do with style.

• 24:13Speaker 06

  And we may be in favor of being contemporary and cutting edge. But when it's our clothing, we are not necessarily so daring and wanting to be out there on the cutting edge.

• 24:27Avery Trufelman?

  There's something about wearing technology that is weird. Like, OK, when Google Glass was introduced, right? It not only had to work well and function as a product, it had to look cool. Like, part of its failing was that it was dorky. Once technology enters fashion, it becomes part of self-expression. And in the case of the Hookless Hooker, people didn't know what to make of this thing yet. It was this weird machine. It was novel. It's like, OK, what is it saying about me if I wear this?

• 24:56Speaker 06

  So they then had to find niche markets. And this is also an important story to anybody who has a crazy invention they want to sell. Find the niche market that will allow you to charge a premium price.

• 25:10Avery Trufelman?

  So one of the first niche markets for the Hookless Hooker is in tobacco pouches, which made sense. You can get your tobacco fix more quickly, and it's also low stakes because you're not, like, wearing it on your torso and you're not trusting the hooker with your whole garment.

• 25:23Speaker 06

  If the closure of a tobacco pouch fails, you just end up with some loose tobacco leaves, not great embarrassment on the stage.

• 25:30Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 25:31Speaker 06

  That's how they slowly began to get people to try it out.

• 25:37Avery Trufelman?

  And then another early use was gloves, which it's hard to imagine now were completely ubiquitous. Everybody wore gloves and everyone was like, oh, now that you mention it, they are sort of annoying to button.

• 25:49Speaker 06

  Think about it for a second. Closing buttons on a glove

• 25:52Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 25:53Speaker 06

  is intrinsically difficult, OK? So you get people to appreciate the little virtue of something that works a bit more easily than the buttons.

• 26:05Avery Trufelman?

  And another example of this was in rainproof rubber boots made by the B.F. Goodrich Rubber Company.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  They start putting it into their shoes and as a way of distinguishing these high-tech blushes.

• 26:20Avery Trufelman?

  The name of the boot was the zipper.

• 26:22Speaker 06

  They adopted the term zipper boots as a way of saying how easy it was to put them on and take them off.

• 26:28Avery Trufelman?

  These zipper boots were very popular in 1927. They accounted for 70% of the business of the Hookless Fastener Company.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  And the term zipper boot really caught on.

• 26:39Avery Trufelman?

  By the late 1920s, after the fashion for the zipper boot went away, the name stuck to the fastener, to the point where in 1939, the Hookless Fastener Company itself started to call its own products zippers, and the company would soon change its own name to Talon, Inc. But even though the zipper was now a known entity that worked with a catchy name, the zipper was still a hard sell.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  It had certain virtues, but not enough to get people to abandon their buttons and their snaps.

• 27:13Avery Trufelman?

  So Talon was like, what about kids' clothes? Maybe we market zippers as a way for kids to dress themselves easily.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  And so they actually got child psychologists to look into the virtues of self-help clothing. And if they could be independent, independently open and close their garments, then wouldn't they be much better off?

• 27:35Avery Trufelman?

  Zippers will make kids stronger and happier and more self-sufficient.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  But that's just one of a whole host of campaigns that are going on to try to find the market that will work. There is no great breakthrough.

• 27:48Avery Trufelman?

  It's just little product by little product, Talon slowly convinced the general public that this invention, the zipper, is good, trustworthy, and maybe, in fact, beneficial.

• 27:59Speaker 06

  Finally, in the 1930s, when the zipper began to get some market success, there were some fashion designers who picked up on the zipper and they decided, I'm not going to hide this. This is the latest thing.

• 28:15Avery Trufelman?

  This latest thing that was secretly many, many decades old, but notably Elsa Chaperelli covered a gown in zippers.

• 28:21Speaker 06

  She had garments by the late 30s that are just festooned with zippers, I believe is what one of the magazine writers said.

• 28:29Avery Trufelman?

  The zipper seemed to be gaining such traction that Gideon Sundback felt ready to face life again. He asked for his daughter Ruth to come back to America.

• 28:39Speaker 06

  Gideon had her come back after several years in Sweden, still a young girl, once the zipper had become successful.

• 28:46Avery Trufelman?

  Professor Robert Friedel actually met Ruth.

• 28:49Speaker 06

  When I was doing this research in the early 1990s, she was still hale and hearty, doing quite well, and was a delightful person.

• 28:59Avery Trufelman?

  And then, just as things were looking up, Sundback's patent on the zipper ran out.

• 29:06Speaker 06

  Once the patent protection had run out by the late 1930s, people were setting up little zipper factories all over the place. It's really quite amazing.

• 29:15Avery Trufelman?

  There were a lot of machinists who made chain machines for Talon, and then when their patent ran out, these machinists would make a chain machine for just about anybody. It became quite easy to just set up a little zipper factory.

• 29:27Speaker 06

  You could set up a little shop in your attic in Brooklyn and start turning out zippers.

• 29:33Avery Trufelman?

  And the floodgates opened. Zippers were suddenly everywhere.

• 29:37Speaker 06

  There was this fascinating transition, this crossover period in the 1940s.

• 29:42Avery Trufelman?

  A perfect example was actually a survey taken at Princeton's Alumni Weekend.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  Of what they had in the flies of their trousers.

• 29:51Avery Trufelman?

  No way.

• 29:52Speaker 06

  Oh, yes. The old people, the people who graduated in 1935 or 1940 or earlier, were still using buttons, whereas the more modern undergraduates were much more likely to have zippers in the flies of their trousers.

• 30:12Avery Trufelman?

  Metal was woven with cloth. This cold machine touched skin. Textiles were integrated with technology.

• 30:22Speaker 06

  It broke open certain inhibition by making the opening and closing of the faffener into something that was so apparent, so in-your-face at times. One of the things that's fascinating to me is how the zipper became a metaphor for guiltless sex, quick sex, for allure.

• 30:47Avery Trufelman?

  Zippers became a way to hint that clothes could be removed as quickly and effortlessly as they were put on.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Zip me up. Can you undo my zipper? Can you zip me up?

• 30:59Avery Trufelman?

  Zippers became part of clothes that pull on and rip off, of boots that don't need time to lace, and bags that zip open to get through security and zip clothes to get back on the plane, of cases that quickly release laptops and secure them back in place.

• 31:12Speaker 06

  They're in our backpack, they're in our handbag, they're in our knapsack, they're in our luggage.

• 31:17Avery Trufelman?

  Zippers are part of a certain, fast-paced, uninhibited life. So I totally get why certain orders of Amish would be like, "This is not even worth it." But this little invention, to me, is this unlikely miracle? I can't believe it exists at all, that it was ever made and that it was believed in long enough to the point where it's still here and working. It would have been all too easy for it to die off at any point in its history. And now, zippers have become more and more important. They actually have vital, dire jobs to do, which I'll get to. But look around you. Look at all these little zippers, all these little machines flashing.

• 32:00Avery Trufelman?

  Now, look closer. Closer. Down at your jeans or at your bag. Look at the tab of your zipper pole. There's a very good chance it's inscribed with three mysterious letters. YKK.

• 32:21Speaker 06

  If you look at a zipper today, you're more likely to find YKK stamped on that zipper than anything else.

• 32:29Avery Trufelman?

  The reason why, after the break. It's such a beautiful feeling to open up your closet and know that you have the right clothes for every occasion. The clothes that make you feel comfortable and warm and totally like yourself. But the only thing better than that feeling is giving it to someone else. This holiday season, turn to Quince. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials. We're talking Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, the kinds of pieces you'd be just as happy receiving as gifting. But here's the secret. It's so affordable. Quince's 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $50, so you can get Luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag.

• 33:12Avery Trufelman?

  I actually recently gave my friend the Mongolian cashmere button down polo sweater. It's so light and so soft, I just needed to share it with her. As long as you're gifting, Quince has so much more than clothing. They've got leather bags, hotel quality bedding, chef grade cookware, skincare, candles, jewelry, basically plenty of ways to find luxury for everyone on your list. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was articles of interest. It's the best way to support the show.

• 33:50Speaker 05

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• 34:25Speaker 07

  Testing, testing, can you hear me? Everybody here okay? Okay.

• 34:29Avery Trufelman?

  I was led inside an absolutely enormous warehouse where a mysterious thrumming sound was so loud, I could barely hear Marty Timms, the vice president of manufacturing at YKK, and he was talking into a microphone.

• 34:41Speaker 07

  The back corner here, so we'll make our way back there and then come around.

• 34:46Avery Trufelman?

  I love how none of these guys are wearing earplugs. And there it was, the source of the sound and perhaps the very source of the zipper on your jeans.

• 34:55Speaker 07

  Mountain and casting area starts here.

• 34:57Avery Trufelman?

  A furnace emitted a molten river of metal that splashed around like water. It's a dramatic amount of fire. I have never seen fire flare lemon yellow before.

• 35:08Speaker 07

  It's like electric yellow. During the summertime, people don't like to hang around here.

• 35:13Avery Trufelman?

  This plant is in Macon, Georgia, where it is already hot. Add to it this furnace, which is 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, melting copper with ingots of zinc, which together make brass. So a pair of jeans you own may have a zipper that came from this infernal goo.

• 35:31Speaker 08

  There's only three factories in the world for YKK2. So we're staying in the 72 countries where we are.

• 35:37Avery Trufelman?

  That's Jessica Cork, president of communications at YKK, and she's going to help explain the big mystery. What does YKK stand for?

• 35:46Speaker 08

  Yoshida Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha.

• 35:49Avery Trufelman?

  Do you speak Japanese?

• 35:49Speaker 08

  I do. So Yoshida is Mr. Yoshida. Tadao Yoshida, the founder of the company. And then Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha is basically like Industries Limited. So, yeah, named after the founder of the company.

• 36:03Avery Trufelman?

  So how did the zipper, this all-American invention, get completely taken over by Japan? And then, in that case, why do they still bother having a factory here? Like, is it pity? These are two different questions. First, this Tadao Yoshida character, who is he?

• 36:20Speaker 08

  Back in 1934, this kid was 26 years old. She was actually working for a company that sold chinaware.

• 36:26Avery Trufelman?

  Tadao Yoshida had gonged to Shanghai to import chinaware, but the company he worked for ended up closing because there was a war breaking out between China and Japan. But...

• 36:36Speaker 08

  That company had a side zipper business, just on the side. And so the founder of that company that ended up going under, he really liked Tadao Yoshida. He was hungry, working really hard. And he ended up saying, look, just take the zippers and see if you can make something of it.

• 36:51Avery Trufelman?

  The zipper business, again, was pretty easy to get into, especially after Sunbax patent ran out in the 30s. You just got your hands on a chain machine and boom.

• 36:59Speaker 08

  There was lots of zipper companies in Japan at the time. And that was primarily to service the westernization of clothing, too, because it's not so long before that people were wearing kimono that don't have a zipper in it.

• 37:10Avery Trufelman?

  With the boom in the zipper business, Yoshida realized that most of the zippers, including his own, were pretty low quality.

• 37:17Speaker 08

  At one point, almost half of his inventory was being returned. And that wasn't acceptable to him. And his dream always was to sell to the Americans and to sell abroad.

• 37:26Avery Trufelman?

  Even after his fledgling zipper factory was completely bombed by the Americans in 1945.

• 37:33Speaker 08

  Thirty-eight years old, has to start all over again, start from scratch, rebuild the whole factory.

• 37:38Avery Trufelman?

  But Yoshida's fierce devotion to quality control only strengthened.

• 37:43Speaker 06

  And slowly, over the decade, from the 50s on into the 70s, built up this astonishing reputation for a firm that became known as YKK.

• 37:53Avery Trufelman?

  Professor Friedel said that YKK's reputation was what made the company.

• 37:58Speaker 06

  His quality controls basically ran everybody else into the ground.

• 38:02Avery Trufelman?

  With a zipper, quality and quality assurance is everything. Ask Emma Stone.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Um, my dress is broken.

• 38:09Speaker 06

  If you were a garment maker, Levi Strauss, for example, huge zipper consumer.

• 38:15Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 06

  You want to make sure that that is not going to be a problem. And so Yoshida basically turned that reputation for quality into an absolutely dominant position in the world zipper industry.

• 38:29Avery Trufelman?

  Even beating out the originator of the hookless hooker itself. So what happened to Talon?

• 38:34Speaker 06

  Talon is a rust belt fable. I'm convinced the combination of just falling asleep on the job and resting on the raw, just figuring, oh, we're Talon, we will always be here.

• 38:49Avery Trufelman?

  Talon died a long, slow death, finally going out of business for good in the 1990s. But I do always love looking for Talon zippers in vintage clothes from the era before YKK came to town.

• 39:04Avery Trufelman?

  When did YKK come to the States?

• 39:06Speaker 08

  In 1960. The company started to expand overseas 1959. So we were actually in New Zealand and India first, but New York was third.

• 39:16Avery Trufelman?

  In the 1960s, New York was the heart of the Schmatta business. It was the place to be.

• 39:20Speaker 08

  When we established YKK in New York, 95% of apparel was manufactured in the United States. That was all of our customers.

• 39:27Avery Trufelman?

  How did the YKK factory end up in Georgia? Blue jeans.

• 39:32Speaker 08

  Late 1990s, we're looking at the major brand name jeans manufacturers and you can understand exactly why our company is located in Georgia.

• 39:43Avery Trufelman?

  In the 1990s, a lot of denim was still being produced in the American South.

• 39:47Speaker 08

  We like had a pipeline shipping out every single day to these jeans manufacturers in Macon. Growing, growing, growing, but where it stops is right around 2000 and 2001. Brands were shifting overseas. And the next slide I'm going to show you at least from 2006, can you guess how many? Can you guess how many jeans manufacturers were still located in the United States?

• 40:07Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, guess how many jeans manufacturers were still in the US in 2006?

• 40:11Speaker 08

  Zero, zero. They had completely gone in that amount of time.

• 40:16Avery Trufelman?

  So in that fiery molten furnace that I saw, YKK forges the brass for zippers that will be mostly exported.

• 40:26Speaker 09

  Now, we still do have brass business because we still send brass chain and brass sliders to Central America and Mexico, but a lot of our domestic business is gone.

• 40:37Avery Trufelman?

  So this is the part that I did not understand. Why would YKK keep this factory here? Why make this product in this country where clothes haven't been made for a long time and labor is expensive? And we're talking like before all this tariff nonsense. Of course, I wondered if this was some sort of vanity property for YKK, like Hercules wearing the pelt of the lion he conquered, you know? Like if this was like a symbolic factory.

• 41:04Speaker 08

  Why stay here? Right, so why stay? Well, let me show you one other slide, right?

• 41:09Avery Trufelman?

  YKK USA had to be strategic and pivot to new markets.

• 41:13Speaker 08

  Really looking at what companies are going to stay here in the United States.

• 41:17Avery Trufelman?

  Even though I've been talking a lot about jeans and clothes and fashion, the apparel market is not really the priority at the YKK factory in Macon.

• 41:26Speaker 08

  Now they're making products like this where if this fails, that person's going to die.

• 41:31Avery Trufelman?

  This factory specializes in performance zippers.

• 41:35Speaker 10

  Every zipper that we manufacture is airtight, watertight, because it is life and limb.

• 41:39Avery Trufelman?

  Zippers that can keep disease out of chem biosuits and keep water out of wet suits. Zippers that are, in the words of Marty Timms, 100% tested.

• 41:50Speaker 10

  And what I mean by that is actually put into a water bath and it is tested to make sure that it does not leak. We also check to see how many times it will actually zip and unzip before it fails.

• 42:00Avery Trufelman?

  They make quickly released zippers for parachutes, fireproof zippers made of Nomex.

• 42:05Speaker 10

  Also used in firefighting, NASCAR racing, any type of electrical worker.

• 42:09Avery Trufelman?

  But, okay, that fireproof zipper that Marty was showing me, yes, it's used in firefighting and NASCAR racing, but it has a primary use. And it's one of the big reasons why this company is still here in the United States. This was made for the military?

• 42:24Speaker 10

  Yes.

• 42:25Avery Trufelman?

  And it's on every military uniform?

• 42:27Speaker 10

  For the most part, but yes, this would be considered a military zipper.

• 42:31Avery Trufelman?

  A steady amount of output from this factory is for the United States military, thanks to the Berry Amendment.

• 42:39Speaker 08

  Berry Amendment, that's huge for us.

• 42:41Avery Trufelman?

  Put very simply, the Berry Amendment requires that food, clothing, fabrics, fibers, and yarns for the American military need to be made domestically.

• 42:51Speaker 08

  The government mandates that the textiles that are used for the US military has to stay, may be manufactured here in the US.

• 42:57Avery Trufelman?

  It's considered a matter of national security, right? Because we could go to war with some country that manufactures our military uniforms or any aspect of them. These clothes are covered with vital lifesaving technology, like zippers. The Berry Amendment is arguably one of the few reasons America has had clothing manufacturing anymore at all. Contracts with the Department of Defense help allow companies like YKK to stay here and to work closely with other specialized sectors.

• 43:29Speaker 08

  As well as things like the outdoor industry, automotive industry, you're going to see lots of stuff that go into cars.

• 43:35Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, yes, YKK makes a lot of internal parts for car seats that you never see, which is fascinating, but... Did you hear that? Jessica mentioned the outdoor industry. Another branch of clothing manufacturer that, not unlike the military, is distinctly interested in cutting-edge, potentially lifesaving, all-terrain clothing technology.

• 43:58Speaker 11

  Functionally, you've got Arcteryx or even Nike saying, hey, what can we do that's something special? Where can we take it next? Where can we go next with it?

• 44:06Avery Trufelman?

  Jim Reid, the president of YKK Corporation of America, says that a lot of their innovation now comes from these outdoor companies. They are the ones who typically drive development.

• 44:16Speaker 11

  Patagonia is great on the sustainability level, as many others are, but that's just a good example. They're always pushing.

• 44:23Avery Trufelman?

  All sorts of outdoor companies are asking YKK to make zippers that are repairable, made out of the same material as the jacket itself, biodegradable, all sorts of new things. It's this interesting dynamic that a lot of companies have, where the military provides a degree of financial security and the outdoor industry provides a sort of inspiration and motivation. And although the zipper might have been at the beginning of integrating technology into our clothing, all kinds of garments are endeavoring to make our lives easier, more efficient, more convenient, and healthier. There's one for odor control. Here's one for reflexivity and shininess. At the Functional Fabric Fair in Portland, Oregon, I walked through rows and rows and

• 45:08Avery Trufelman?

  rows of booths, all peddling swatches of fabric that could defend against UV rays, wick sweat, deflect rain.

• 45:15Speaker 12

  Rinco-resistant. High-weight molecular polyethylene. Stretchy, too.

• 45:19Speaker 13

  Repropermeability. Customizable in terms of color, size, whatever you need.

• 45:23Avery Trufelman?

  Textile mills and factories hawked squares of fabrics that seemed capable of almost anything, and representatives from all the major outdoor companies were there, going from booth to booth, taking meetings, and touching the materials that would play the starring roles in their next season's jackets and anoraks. And of course, among all the booths was none other than YKK.

• 45:43Speaker 08

  So a lot of the stuff you saw in Macon would be different from this. This is intended more for like rain, snow, ski. Rather than like submersive.

• 45:52Avery Trufelman?

  And like YKK, a lot of these vendors at Functional Fabric Fair, at least the ones that are Berry Amendment compliant and have a factory in the United States, have the same dual purpose. They serve both the outdoor industry and the military.

• 46:06Speaker 12

  We service the military.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  You don't get them from the military?

• 46:09Avery Trufelman?

  Yes.

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Oh, you do?

• 46:11Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  This is military, made in the US, yes.

• 46:13Speaker 12

  Bulletproof vests, blast plates for tanks, things like that.

• 46:17Avery Trufelman?

  The next time you're looking at an outdoor clothing company's website, just search the word tactical. They might have a specialty line for the military. And it makes sense. I mean, even the zipper was adopted early on by the military.

• 46:28Speaker 06

  They began to adopt the zipper for flying suits, which have very long closures.

• 46:35Avery Trufelman?

  The military does seem to pop up in some way, manner, or form in almost every single story I have ever done. But the quest for high-tech clothing in the United States has been egged on by this ongoing and long-running tango between the military and the outdoor industry. So that is why I've spent two years exploring the intersection of the military and the outdoor industry, and how all of our clothing became performance wear. That will be the next season of Articles of Interest, coming this fall.

• 47:15Avery Trufelman?

  Stay tuned.

• 47:20Avery Trufelman?

  Special thanks this episode to my friends and fellow fashion journalists Bliss Foster and Daniela Corey, who make one of the select few Patreons I actually subscribe to. Their runway coverage is incredible. Thanks also to the fabulous Davia Nelson and to Stacy Hoover for being my gateway to the Amish community. Little plug for Stacy, she runs a bed and breakfast in New Orleans called Wonderland, where artists can stay for $50 a day. I want to go. Check it out for me, please. Of course, thanks to Alison Behringer for editing this script. It's such an honor to work with her. She makes a podcast called Bodies. And actually, both of our shows were listed by Time Magazine as some of the best podcasts of all time, which is so cool.

• 48:02Avery Trufelman?

  I don't know, this feels like a podcast supergroup to be able to be edited by Allison. So check out Bodies also. And this episode, it was a special treat to work with the best engineer in the world, John Delore. Lately, I've been mixing and mastering the episodes by myself. Maybe if you're a real audio head, you're like, yeah, no, I could tell. But it was really fun to get to work with John this one. The zipper song is by Iata. All the other music is usually by Ray Royal. The theme songs are by Sisami. For images of early rudimentary zippers and updates on the next impending season, you know where to go. It's articlesofinterest.substack.com.

• 48:48Speaker 13

  Radiotopia.

• 48:51Speaker 13

  From PRX.