Velcro: Vulcans or a rambling guy and plants? I know which story I prefer. :D
"One day in 1948, an amateur Swiss mountaineer and naturalist, George de Mestral, went on a nature walk with his dog through a field of hitchhiking bur plants. He and his dog returned home covered with burs. With an intense curiosity, Mestral went to his microscope and inspected one of the many burs stuck to his pants. He saw numerous small hooks that enabled the seed-bearing bur to cling so tenaciously to the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants. George de Mestral raised his head from the microscope and smiled thinking, "I will design a unique, two-sided fastener, one side with stiff hooks like the burs and the other side with soft loops like the fabric of my pants. I will call my invention Velcro® a combination of the words velour and crochet. It will rival the zipper in it's ability to fasten."
He thought that, did he? :p
"Mestral's idea met with resistance and even laughter, but the inventor 'stuck' by his invention. Together with a weaver from a textile plant in France, Mestal perfected his hook and loop fastener. By trial and error, he realized that nylon when sewn under infrared light, formed tough hooks for the burr side of the fastener. This finished the design, patented in 1955. The inventor formed Velcro Industries to manufacture his invention. Mestral was selling over sixty million yards of Velcro per year. Today it is a multi-million dollar industry."
What You Need To Know About...
Well, at least it was invented at about the right time. But my money's still on the Vulcans. After all, how would you ever discover that you had to sew nylon under infrared light? Honestly.
But he was Swiss, not American. The Vulcans should have landed in Switzerland. They could have gone skiing. And done.. other Swiss things. Eaten chocolate. :)
It is more interesting than the whole Voyager causing the microprocessor revolution. One point to Enterprise. Let's have more episodes like that. About... Velcro.
Velcro. Woo!
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