George De Mestral
George De Mestral invented velcro.
He was born in June the 19th 1907 and he died February 8th 1990
One summers day in 1948, George De Mestral decided to take his dog for a nature hike. The man and his faithful companion both returned home covered in burrs, the plant seed sacs that cling to animal fur in order to travel to fertile planting grounds. The man neglected the matted dog and with a burning curiosity ran to his microscope and inspected one of the many burrs that stuck to his pants. He saw all the small hooks that enabled the burr to cling so viciously 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 burrs and the other side with soft hoops like the fabric of my pants. I will call my invention "Velcro" - a combination of the word velour and crochet it will rival the zipper in its ability to fasten.
Mestral met with resistance and even laughter but the inventor struck by his invention together with a weaver from a textile plant in France. Mestral perfected his hook and loop fastener by trial and error, he realised that nylon when sewn under infra-red light formed tough hooks for the side of the fastener, this finished the design. It was patented in 1955 and 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. Not bad for an invention based on mother nature.
My inventor was born in a small village near Lausanne Switzerland and by working odd jobs he paid his way through the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, were he graduated as an electrical engineer. He then began his own company to manufacture Velcro