Tedium - Hooked On Velcro 👟

A burr just like this one inspired the creation of Velcro. (Selena N.B.H./Flickr)

The guy who invented Velcro was inspired by a prickly shrub, because of course he was

The thing with nature is that, often, it has solved a problem and has lots of examples of it in the wild long before the first human takes any steps to successfully design something that replicates it.

Certainly, for example, it was obvious that wings would eventually be replicated in man-made form, leading to aircraft. Birds are everywhere. The idea was apparent with no additional explanation. The issue, really, was technology.

But what about burrs? These tiny thorned stems, common to various plants, have this ability to stick to whatever soft, cushy thing passes by—turning anything that passes by into the perfect vessel for distributing seeds, and deterring animals from getting too close, among other things.

But while plenty of mammals have been annoyed by them throughout history, only one was observant enough to figure out that there might actually be a use case to these burrs that makes them awesome.

Where most people saw annoyance, George de Mestral saw inspiration. (Bru-nO/Pixabay)

And that mammal’s name was George de Mestral. A Swiss engineer who had, strangely enough, invented a model plane as a child, was inspired after a 1941 walk in the Alps with his dog in which he encountered a bunch of these burrs.

Most people would rub them off and forget about them, but de Mestral decided it’d be a great idea to analyze them under a microscope—and what he found inspired him to create.

Yes, someone else thought to put a burr under a microscope, thankfully.

The burr uses lots of tiny hooks to connect to the fur and clothing of many a passerby, effectively latching onto loops of soft hair or fur.

It’s worth noting de Mestral benefited from some other relatively recent inventions in attempting to recreate a synthetic variation on a natural phenomenon—specifically, nylon, a man-made take on silk that had been invented by Wallace Carothers and his team at DuPont just a few years prior to de Mestral’s fateful walk.

Perhaps the most challenging part of producing the material might have been creating the hooks, which involved heating the nylon using an infrared light, allowing the stiff side of the material to take and keep its shape. Per one of the many Velcro-related patents filed by de Mestral:

It is thus possible to use a pair of such pieces of fabric advantage as a substitute for the usual fastening means, such as slide-operated fasteners, ordinary buttons, press buttons or the like attaching means. As a matter of fact, it is sufficient to sew a piece of fabric of the type described along the edges of the parts of garments, curtains and the like, which are to be held together. A mere press sure exerted on the two garment elements against each other will provide for their fastening. A somewhat considerable tractional stress exerted on the two garment elements thus associated, allows separating them when required.

So really, de Mestral had to invent two items, one that required the other. The development process was lengthy—despite first coming upon the idea in 1941, he didn’t start developing until 1948, and finding the right materials took some time, with the discovery of nylon for the hook material proving the big challenge.

But eventually, he found it, reportedly by accident. And the result is one of the most quietly fundamental materials of the 20th century.

A few years back, Velcro the company did something very amusing, probably inspired by the fact that, well, Velcro is essentially a generic term at this point, and the patents are long expired: It created a music video.

Part trademark plea, part tongue-in-cheek acceptance of the brand’s unfortunate situation, the company’s singing “lawyers” politely asked the public not to use Velcro when referring to the generic material that cheap manufacturers frequently undercut Velcro on from a price perspective.

(I’m sure Velcro would love me to use the phrase “VELCRO® Brand fasteners” rather than referring to Velcro in noun form, but I have my limits as a writer.)

Understandably, given the internet’s already shaky appreciation of trademark law and despite the funny way of asking, the company received a mixed reaction for this plea, and the company responded by releasing a follow-up video in which it gathered up the mean comments it received.

It’s officially the funniest music video you’ll watch today, a parody that makes the case for the importance of trademark law.

But in a way, the branding campaign does raise some interesting points—in a world where we protect copyright for far longer than it deserves, patents are protected for far shorter periods, a situation that puts trademark owners in an awkward position when they find everyone in the world referring to everyone else’s products with their name. (It doesn’t help that “hook and loop” is an infinitely lamer term than “Velcro.”)

“It's not about doing it for us, it's about doing the right thing,” the company argues on its website. “Successful brands around the world need your support to help protect trademark guidelines. Pledge to end the era of broken trademark laws.”

Velcro, the company, didn’t have to have a sense of humor about it, but somehow they did.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason why, as a company, they stuck around.

--

Find this one an interesting read? Share it with a pal! We’ll see you later in the week.