when was the zipper invented and by whom
Zipper The company, reorganized as the Fastener Manufacturing and Machine Company, moved to Hoboken, N.J. in 1901. Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-American electrical engineer, was hired to work for the company in 1906. Good technical skills and a marriage to the plant-manager's daughter Elvira Aronson led Sundback to the position of head designer. The company moved to Meadville, PA, where it operated for most of the 20th century under the name Talon, Inc. After his wife's death in 1911, Sundback devoted himself to improving the fastener, and by December 1913 he had designed the modern zipper. The rights to this invention were owned by the Meadville company (operating as the Hookless Fastener Co.), but Sundback retained non-U.S. rights and used these to set up in subsequent years the Canadian firm Lightning Fastner Co. in St. Catharines, Ont. Sundback's work with this firm has led to the common misperception that he was Canadian and that the zipper originated in that country.[7]
Cotton picker Cotton picking was originally done by hand. In many societies, like America, slave and serf labor was utilized to pick the cotton, increasing the plantation owner's profit margins (See Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade). The first practical cotton picker was invented over a period of years beginning in the late 1920s by John Daniel Rust (1892â€“1954) with the later help of his brother Mack Rust. Other inventors had tried designs with a barbed spindle to twist cotton fibers onto the spindle and then pull the cotton from the boll, but these early designs were impractical because the spindle became clogged with cotton. Rust determined that a smooth, moist spindle could be used to strip the fibers from the boll without trapping them in the machinery. In 1933 John Rust received his first patent, and eventually, he and his brother owned forty-seven patents on cotton picking machinery. However, during the Great Depression it was difficult to obtain financing to develop their inventions.[1]