It took only eighty years from the earliest forms of zipper to its first commercial patent. Elias Howe, the inventor of the first sewing machine also patented “an Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure,” but never pursued it, likely due to the enormous success of the first invention. Forty years later Whitcomb Judson created a “clasp locker” for shoes, a system of interlocking hooks and eyes brought together by a sliding tab. Judson took Gideon Sundback as the lead designer to improve his invention.

On this day, April 29, in 1913, Sundback patented his “Hookless Fastener.” Instead of eyes and hooks, he used a denser array of interlocking teeth, locking when the tab moved up and unlocking when the tab moved down.

After four more years, the improved “Separable Fastener” was picked up the the U.S. army to help troops don their uniforms. The broader market picked up after the B.F. Goodrich rubber company introduced the fastener on their galoshes, calling it a “zipper,” after the sound it made when fastened together. After that the zipper began competing with buttons in “The Battle of the Fly” on men’s jeans. Esquire magazine, for one, praised the new invention on jeans, saying it would finally prevent the “possibility of Unintentional and Embarrassing Disarray.”