Things that Clinging on Your Shirt

You might think clothes were an important invention. And they were! But what good would clothes be if they kept falling off our bodies?Read about a few inventions that help us keep our clothes where they belong

In 1893, Whitcomb Judson invented the sliding fastener, or zipper, to replace buttonhooks on shoes. The sliding fastener was not called a zipper until much later, though. In 1923, the Goodrich Company gave the name "Zipper" to boots that closed with a sliding fastener. People were much more charmed by the fastener than by the Zipper boots. Soon, everyone was calling the fastener itself a zipper. And the name stuck.

Walter Hunt never meant to invent the safety pin. But, so the story goes, he owed a man money. The man gave Hunt a piece of wire and offered him $400 for anything he could invent. Hunt twisted the wire into a safety pin. He patented it in 1849, and it is said to have made the man who bought it rich.