Not all lucky accidents have changed the way we live in dramatic ways. Some fortunate accidents have just made life a
little more convenient. But many of these conveniences have become such a part of our everyday lives that we’ve come
to take them for granted.
The discovery of Velcro® is one such fortunate accident. One summer day in 1948, a
Swiss inventor named George de Mestral went for a hike. When he returned, he was
covered in burrs—seed-sacs that cling to clothes. Nature designed burrs to do this
in order to spread seeds to new areas. De Mestral became curious about how these
burrs attached themselves to clothes and hair. He inspected one of the burrs from
his pants under a microscope. He saw that it had countless tiny hooks that clung to
the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants. This gave him
the idea to design a new kind of fastener. The fastener
would be made of two nylon strips, one side with stiff
hooks like the burrs and the other side with loops like
the fabric of his pants. His invention, Velcro, has since
become ubiquitous. It can be found on everything
from shoes to wallets to blood pressure cuff s to
space shuttles.