happy zipper day!

Today is the birthday of the zipper! You know, that thing that closes up your jeans. Or perhaps closes your jacket.

I also found out what "YKK" means. You probably see that on the zipper tabs. It's actually a really long Japanese name and I don't think I can pronounce it correctly. Even if I tried to write it, I would probably mispronounce it. You can look it up if you want.

The zipper was patented as the "separable fastener" in 1913. Since "separable fastener" wasn't a catchy name, somebody started calling it a zipper.

Oddly enough, people didn't really dig the zipper at first. They just loved their buttons. In 1930, the zipper people spent a lot of money advertising the beauty of their separable fasteners. They probably spent more than $10. Back in 1930, $10 was a LOT of money. That's, like, 10 commercials on American Idol. Back then they had commercials on American Scat.

Scatting was huge in those days. Unfortunately, TV shows were silent, so you couldn't really hear them. You could hear the music if you had somebody playing piano in your home. And then you could read their words because the screen would keep showing you what they said on a cue card that looked all brown.

Watch a silent movie and my joke will be hilarious. Seriously, it's funny if you think about somebody scatting and then it pops up on the screen saying, "Scat bat a ratt tatt a scattery doo!"

I gotta start making jokes for people under 80...

Anyway, the zipper caught on when 1930's Ryan Seacrest started wearing pants with zippers. Before then people would fumble with buttons, which, I guess, were good enough for dress shirts, but too darned complicated for pants.

The 1930's were a strange time.

I'm off to check my separable fastener.

Enjoy!

-DJ