Zipper was a brand name for boots before it closed jackets
The zipper—zip, zip fastener, once clasp locker—joins fabric edges with interlocking metal or plastic teeth guided by a Y-shaped slider. The name stuck in 1923 from rubber galoshes that closed in one zip of the hand. Jackets may use single or double-separating sliders for venting from the bottom.
Zippers close jackets, jeans, luggage, tents and sleeping bags and come in countless sizes and colours. The teeth, also called elements, can be separate pieces or formed from one continuous coil, and the word itself imitates the high-pitched sound the slider makes. Luggage often carries two sliders, and the bag is shut wherever along the track they meet.
Separating jacket zippers can have two sliders on one tape: raising the lower one opens the hem for sitting or cycling, and lowering both lets the halves come fully apart. Manufacturers get different jobs by stitching one end closed, stitching both, or leaving both free. Uses range from trouser flies and pockets to dress closures, convertible trousers that turn into shorts, detachable hoods and extra pouches zipped onto military rucksacks.
Cheap as they are, a failed zipper can make a garment useless and cost real money to replace. A worn slider stops aligning the alternating teeth, a separating zipper's insertion pin can rip away from the tape, and the fastener may jam or partly break off.
Elias Howe patented an improvement in garment fastenings in 1851, closer to a fancy drawstring than a slide fastener, but never marketed it. Whitcomb Judson of Chicago patented a shoe fastener in 1893 and then his clasp locker, a complicated hook-and-eye device prone to jamming. With Colonel Lewis Walker he founded the Universal Fastener Company and showed it at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to little interest, and it was never used in clothing.
Source: Zipper
