Every day, countless people all over the world use a very modern invention to keep their clothing closed: the zipper. Although the earliest men and women on earth used a variety of closures to stay warm, it was only in the mid-nineteenth century that this convenient device began to be developed by several different inventors. As late as the mid-1800s, buttons were the most popular method to fasten clothing. Garments and shoes often contained dozens of tiny buttons that took a lot of time to close. In 1851 the inventor of the sewing machine, Elias Howe, designed what he called an automatic continuous clothing closure to replace those endless buttons. Howe's device consisted of a pattern of clasps joined when a cord ran over a series of ribs.

In 1893, a mechanical engineer named Whitcomb L. Judson took Howe's idea a step further. Judson designed a fastener that used a slide to connect a series of hooks and eyes. Judson patented this design, which allowed him to control the continuing development of his product. Judson displayed these new slide fasteners at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Although he sold only 20 of his hookless fasteners that day, investor Lewis Walker saw the potential in the new device. Judson and Walker founded the Universal Fastener Company in 1894 with Walker's financial backing. Their first order for fasteners came from the United States Postal Service, which used them in mailbags.

Because these fasteners were still less than completely functional, Judson continued to tinker with his product. He invented a zipper that parted completely, which could be used to fasten items like jackets and coats. He also began to clamp the teeth of the device onto a piece of cloth that would then be sewn onto the garment, instead of attaching each tooth individually to the garment itself.

In 1906, Judson's company (now called the Automatic Hook and Eye Company) hired Otto Frederick Gideon Sundback, who solved the dual problems of the clasps popping apart and sticking open. He designed and patented a device he called Plako, which is considered to be the direct prototype of the modern zipper. A machine that could create hookless fasteners in one process was also engineered, and this made mass production of the device possible.

The general public was not the first market for zippers. The first mass-produced zippers were used during World War I in soldiers' fighting gear, including life vests and flight suits. Given the popularity, ease, and convenience of zippers in military clothing, Sundback realized the potential market in the civilian population for his invention.

Zippers began to be produced for the public in the 1920s. The president of the B. F. Goodrich rubber company coined the word zipper when he ordered a supply of hookless fasteners to be used in rain boots. Although he intended for the boots themselves to be called zippers, the name was applied to the fastening device instead, because it so closely resembled the sound made when the slider is pulled up or down quickly.

Although zippers were a clear improvement over the fasteners that preceded