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 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 with his dog. When they returned, they were covered in burrs-seed-sacs that cling to animal fur and clothes. Nature designed burrs to do this in order to spread seed to new areas. De mestral become curious about how these 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 cuffs to space shuttles.