Home History Invention Adoption Significance Works Cited                               Fast Fact:  When President Bush was in office in 1990, the  White House staff coined the  word "velcrosis" to mean a  situation in which people  uncontrollably tend to swarm  around and "stick" to the  President when he makes a  public appearance 13

How Velcro came to be As previously stated in the History section, there were many antecedents to Velcro.  Another fastener that was popular and helped to influence George de Mestral's Velcro design was the hook and eye.  This form of fastener was popular for clothes needing to fit snugly and requiring hidden, sturdy fastenings. Prior to 1830, hooks and eyes were made of copper but later replaced by brass around 1830.  Hooks were mainly used on outerwear and essential to the proper fit of bodices through the 1880s.10 http://www.fabrics.net/ Beginning in the late 1890s, the clothing fashion changed dramatically.  This change resulted in a need for various sizes and types of hook closings.  Strong hooks were especially needed for fur, capes, and skirt and trouser waistbands.11  The zipper, which began appearing in America in the 1920s, initially lacked the strong hook closure needed for heavy articles of clothing.  It took another thirty years for Mother Nature, along with an inquisitive engineer, to make a well-built, durable hook fastener.  Overall, the invention of Velcro was an interesting and detailed process.  Shortly after George de Mestral discovered the hook and loop design of the grass burrs, he shared his findings with his family friend, Alfred Gonet.12  Recognizing the potential of a practical new fastener, de Mestral quit his job as an engineer, received a loan for $150,000 from the bank, and began experimenting with ways to recreate the hook design of the common burr.14  Immediately, he conversed with fabric and cloth experts who worked with different types of woven and knit cloth in Lyon, France.  The city of Lyon, at this time, was a worldwide center for weaving.15  At first, de Mestral's proposal met with ridicule and resistance, but the inventor stuck by his ideas. Together with a weaver from a textile plant in France, de Mestral worked to perfect his hook and loop fastener, which he initally wanted to label "locking tape."16  Cotton was the first material that successfully transformed into this hook design, but it was too expensive to mass produce.17  So de Mestral experimented with other fabrics.  All in all, it took de Mestral eight years of trial and error until he developed a successful design.18  Oddly enough, it was by accident that he realized that nylon, when sewn under infrared light, formed tough hooks for the burr side of the fastener.19  Using this as his guideline, de Mestral developed a two-sided fastener in which one side had stiff "hooks" like the burrs and the other side had soft "loops" like the fabric of his pants.  This discovery was a very simple way to attach two things. In 1951, de Mestral was granted a patent in Switzerland for his new product, which he named Velcro.  French for the word "hook," Velcro is derived from the words "velours" and "crochet." 20  In 1952, with the support of a company called Gonet & Company, de Mestral began the first Velcro company called Velcro S.A. in Switzerland. Velcro S.A. received additional patents in ten other countries, including the United States.21