How did we ever live without it? The zipper is so basic, so useful, and so low-tech you'd think it had been around since the time of the Incas. But it wasn't perfected until 1913, when a Swede, Gideon Sundback, designed the Hookless 2, a fastener with two fabric strips and teeth along the edges. He was improving on an unwieldy forerunner with hooks and rings designed 20 years earlier. The metal fastener was first used in bulk by the U.S. Navy in 1917 for flying suits, then as a slide fastener in 1923 for rubber galoshes, christened zippers, made by B.F. Goodrich. The zipper later entered the lexicon as an apt description of the device itself, which was said to make a zip sound as the metal teeth moved.

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