Whitcomb L. Judson

thumb|250px|Judson's original 'clasp locker' patent, 1893

thumb|250px|Judson's improved 'clasp-locker' fastener, 1893

Whitcomb L. Judson (March 7, 1843 – December 7, 1909) was an American machine salesman, mechanical engineer and inventor. He received thirty patents over a sixteen-year career, fourteen of which were on pneumatic street railway innovations. Six of his patents had to do with a motor mechanism suspended beneath the rail-car that functioned with compressed air. He founded the Judson Pneumatic Street Railway.

Judson is most noted for his invention of the zip fastener. It was originally called a clasp-locker. The first application was as a fastener for shoes and high boots. The patent said it could be used wherever it was desirable to connect a pair of adjacent flexible parts that could be detached easily. Possible applications noted were for corsets, gloves, and mail bags.

Early life

Judson was born March 7, 1843, in Chicago, Illinois. He served in the Union Army and enlisted in 1861 at Oneida, Illinois, in the 42nd Illinois Infantry Regiment according to the Illinois State Archives. Judson attended Knox College in his hometown Galesburg, Illinois. He was found in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1886. In 1886 and 1887 the Minneapolis city directory identified Judson as a "traveling agent" – a traveling salesman working probably for Pitts Agricultural Works. A couple of years later Judson began working for Earle Manufacturing Company with Harry L. Earle as the head of the firm. Judson sold band cutters and grain scales for them along with other items as one of their salesmen.

Career

Street railway

Judson began his efforts of making inventions around 1888 to 1889. His concentration was on inventions for a "pneumatic street railway".

Zipper

Judson's most noteworthy invention, a chain-lock fastener, was the precursor to the modern zipper which he developed and invented in 1891. Judson is generally recognized as the inventor of the zipper. He also invented a "clasp-locker" automation production machine that made his fastener device inexpensively. His metal zipper fastener device was actually called a "clasp-locker" in his time; the name "zipper" was not actually coined or used until many years after his death. The "clasp locker" was a complicated hook-and-eye fastener with an arrangement of hooks and eyes run by a "guide" for closing and opening a clothing item. The first application was as a shoe fastener, and there is mention in the patents for possible applications for corsets, gloves, mail bags, and "generally wherever it is desired to detachably connect a pair of adjacent flexible parts." It is also said one of the reasons he invented this device was to relieve the tedium of fastening high button boots that were fashionable in those days.

The patent was approved in May 1893 after the last amendment was filed with an improved version. When the two patents were finally issued on August 29 (along with 378 others that day), they received the numbers U.S.P. 504,038 (first) and U.S.P. 504,037 (second). These patents describe several designs of the "clasp-locker". Later design patents of the fastener describe opposite elements on each side that are identical to each other and fit together by the engaging of "pintles" and "sockets." In his patent U.S.P. 557,207 of 1896 is a description mostly like the zipper of today.

In 1893, Judson exhibited his new invention at the Chicago World's Fair where it had its debut. Judson launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture his new invention, together with Harry L. Earle and Lewis Walker. The Universal Fastener Company started out in Chicago and then moved to Elyria, Ohio. It then moved to Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, and then to Hoboken, New Jersey. The name changed eventually to Automatic Hook and Eye Company.

Judson's "clasp-locker" met with little commercial success at first. He ultimately never saw much success in the "clasp-locker" as a fashion item during his lifetime. Judson made a "C-curity" clasp-locker fastener in 1905 which was an improved version of his previous patents. It tended to break open unexpectedly like the predecessors. Clothing manufacturers showed little interest in Judson's fastener perhaps because of this reason.

Judson made his invention to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day as shows in his wording in the patent application. He describes this in his patent U.S.P. 557,207

In 1913, the zipper was improved by the Swedish American engineer, Gideon Sundback, and also by Catharina Kuhn-Moos of Europe. Sundback successfully redesigned Judson's fastener into a more streamlined and reliable form called "Talon." Automatic Hook and Eye Company then changed its name to the Hookless Fastener Company. In 1937 the Hookless Fastener Company became Talon, Inc. Rossland became vice-president of Continental Motor Manufacturing Company, which developed the first automobile hydraulic system co-innovated by Judson.

Later life

Judson lived in New York City for the later part of his life. He moved in 1906 to Muskegon, Michigan. There he died at the age of 63 on December 7, 1909. The cause of death was stomach cancer.

Footnotes

References

Sources

Friedel, Robert, Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty, W. W. Norton & Company, 1996,
Leslie, Sarah et al., The World's Greatest Inventors, Platt & Munk, 1976,
Travers, Bridget World of Invention, Gale Research, 1994,