Community Corner

Google Doodle UnZips for Inventor of the Zipper

Google celebrates the birthday of Gideon Sundback, inventor of the zipper, by unzipping its homepage on Tuesday.

If you load the Google homepage today, you'll see a zipper running the center length of the page. You can either click or drag the virtual zipper to interact with it. When you do, the page unzips to reveal search results for zipper inventor Gideon Sundback, born on April 24, 1880 in Sweden.

Sundback moved to the United States in 1905 and began working for the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and then later for the Universal Fastener Company in Hoboken, New Jersey, according to Wikipedia.

For the next several years, Sundback developed on other engineers' designs of garment fasteners until filing a patent for the "Separable Fastener" in 1917.

Find out what's happening in Brentwoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

B.F. Goodrich coined the term "zipper" in 1923, using the fasteners on a pair of its boots, according to Wikipedia.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Brentwood