Fascinating read. Interesting to see how zipper's evolution into today's ubiquitous household utility went through many stages of evolution, including the classic S-curve that today's successful tech products almost (inevitably) go through -- a testament to robustness of economic theories across widely varying industries. [0]
Another interesting fact that blew my mind recently -- 80% of all the world's zippers are manufactured in a city entirely dedicated to manufacturing clothing harnesses (hook-and-eye, Velcro et al.) in southeastern China. [1]
I hate the way the big-shots at all the Aerosol Velcro manufacturers get together and put different amounts of hooks and loops into the two cans, so you always have some left over. Kind of like the Hotdog Conspiracy. Well they're not ripping off this nitwit anymore!
I read or heard somewhere the major clothing brands consider YKK zippers so reliable they won't even look at competitors product, even at substantial discounts, the zipper being such a small portion of the total cost of goods, but a critical point of failure that could easily ruin their brand.
That's interesting, because I have a jacket that was cheap and is generally durable but the zipper has jammed and derailed sometimes, so I went to look at it, and guess what - it's stamped with CMZ, and indeed, that is a zipper manufacturer that is not YKK.
So I guess we can trace back the origins of Lean manufacturing back to 1851 ;-)
I wonder if the wealthy / successful (outside of science fields) back then shared insights and knowledge in a similar wat as we do today, so many more could benefit.
This is silly. What is the great idea? A way to quickly connect and disconnect things?
Zippers may have failed early on. But that is going to be more about difficulty of making them than the idea failing. This is closer to saying computers failed see first because the machines of Babbage fight factually do anything useful.
I have never thought they were simple to the point of obvious. In large because I can't fix many when they break. So, to that point, I'd imagine most attempts at zippers fail.
Many great ideas fail at first, and for a long time, because they’re massively ahead of their time. The helicopter, airplane, submarine, gun, and many more are fine examples. The submarine though has literally hundreds (or thousands if you stretch the definition) of years of abject failure before about a hundred years of resounding success.
That’s a long time to be essentially sending people to a watery grave (with a few limited successes) before materials and engineering technology caught up to the vision of submersibles.
I would go and say that for most innovative things, the invention and the implementation are almost always 2 different phases (sometimes years or even decades apart).
Sometimes the technology for implementation is not there and sometimes people have a hard time grasping what they’re looking at, even if an implementation is done.
Another interesting fact that blew my mind recently -- 80% of all the world's zippers are manufactured in a city entirely dedicated to manufacturing clothing harnesses (hook-and-eye, Velcro et al.) in southeastern China. [1]
[0] http://innovationzen.com/blog/2006/08/17/innovation-manageme... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qiaotou,_Yongjia_County