how burdock fruits inspired the invention of the hook and loop fastener
Hook and loop fastener The original hook-and-loop fastener was conceived in 1941 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral.[1][2][3] The idea came to him one day after returning from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. He took a close look at the burrs (seeds) of burdock that kept sticking to his clothes and his dog's fur. He examined them under a microscope, and noted their hundreds of "hooks" that caught on anything with a loop, such as clothing, animal fur, or hair.[4] He saw the possibility of binding two materials reversibly in a simple fashion if he could figure out how to duplicate the hooks and loops.[1][3] Hook and Loop is viewed by some like Steven Vogel[5] or Werner Nachtigall[6] as a key example of inspiration from nature or the copying of nature's mechanisms (called bionics or biomimesis).
Fruit of the Loom The Fruit of the Loom brand dates back to 1851 in Rhode Island[1][2] when Robert Knight, a textile mill owner, visited his friend, Rufus Skeel. Skeel owned a small shop in Providence that sold cloth from Knight's mill. Skeel's daughter painted images of apples and applied them to the bolts of cloth. The ones with the apple emblems proved most popular. Mr. Knight thought the labels would be the perfect symbol for his trade name, Fruit of the Loom – an expression referring to clothes, paralleling the phrase "fruit of the womb" meaning "children", which can be traced back to use in the Bible (Psalm 127:3).