My goal in starting Zipr Shift LLC and inventing what I know to be a superior closure is to make the current zipper technology obsolete.
Why? Well, zippers are inadequate… even for what they were made for.
Zippers were made to make putting on clothing faster and easier. And, they’re not strong enough for use on clothing as demonstrated by the amount that zippers break on clothing.
It’s such a poor design that it fails in its intended use.
But, what aspect of the design is most fallible?
I believed the worst aspect is the zipper tape. It is the heart of the closure. If the zipper tape fails whether by the teeth falling off or otherwise then everything else spirals downward: the slider will derail and then one’s only hope is meticulously taking every tooth and interlocking them by hand. It would be a painful process and that’s why a broken closure makes whatever it’s on utterly useless and unusable.
A little history lesson…
The first zipper tape ever was invented by a man named Elias Howe in 1851. Here is the patent for the first zipper tape.
Ever since then, zippers for clothing have always been comprised of interlocking parts whether clasps or teeth or coils.
There’s a saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Well, all teeth of the zipper chain are weak links. And, mainly, because they’re not even connected to one another! What a terrible bond- a flimsy piece of fabric connects them. The teeth are not unified parts. They just hang onto the same thing, and so they’re all lonely, exposed, weak.
So the design of individual interlocking parts originated in 1851. That was 165 years ago.
Why are we using 19th century technology and fooling ourselves that we can tweak it to meet the demands of 21st century challenges?
The rotary telephone was invented 40 years after the first zipper tape was invented. Here’s the patent for the first rotary telephone.
We’re not using rotary telephones anymore. We’re using smart phones!
I want to put the current, toothed zipper in museums right by the rotary telephone, the typewriter (which was replaced by computers) and other old-fashioned tech.
