An idea that stuck: The remarkable story behind Velcro
“Aside from Velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe.”
One winter in 1948, the Swiss engineer George de Mestral was walking his dog, Milka, in the Jura mountains.
After a while, George started getting cold and called out for him.
His trusty pet emerged from the bushes and ran towards him with the enthusiasm only a dog could have.
When George went to stroke him, he noticed that burdock burrs covered his coat, and they were almost impossible to remove.
When he got home, he examined the burrs under a microscope and saw they all had tiny hooks. Then, a light went on in his head.
He locked himself away in a shed for several years and experimented.
In September 1955, he earned U.S. Patent number 2,717,437. We know it as Velcro, a portmanteau of the French words ‘velours’ (velvet) and ‘crochet’ (hook).
Velcro didn’t become widely famous until the 1960s when NASA used it to stop things from floating away in zero gravity - and funky fashion designers like Pierre Cardin, who used it as a novel way of fastening and unfastening clothing.
Today, it remains one of the best-known and most commercially successful instances of biomimicry.
Thanks, Milka.
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