FROM A MEADOW TO MIGHTY HEIGHTS!

- T.V.Venkateswaran

If you have ever walked through a grass meadow, you might have had small prickly seeds clinging to your socks. These seeds are called cockleburs. If you saw them on your clothes, you would probably brush them off. However, one man's curiosity about these clingy little seeds led to an amazing invention the Velcro.

An Idea, An Invention:

In the 1940s, a Swiss engineer named George de Mestral was returning home from a hunting trip with his dog. When he reached home, he found some cockleburs clinging to his jacket and his dog's fur. Initially, Mestral was annoyed, but his irritation gave way to curiosity when he realised that picking them off was not easy. The cockleburs clung to his clothes and needed to be prised out one by one.

Mestral examined the seeds under a microscope. When magnified to a hundred times their size, the seeds looked menacing! Each of them was like a ball covered with spiky hooks. Mestral realised that the hooked curve at the end of the spikes enabled the seeds to latch on to anything made of loops, like clothing, animal fur or hair. This elegant arrangement sparked an idea a multi-purpose fastener!

Bringing The Idea To Life:

Mestral faced some difficulty in duplicating the hooks-and-loops arrangement. He first tried to make them out of cotton, but they wore out easily - a few turns of fastening and unfastening rendered them useless.

He then decided to try nylon, which had several advantages. It could be made in different thickness, and was strong and long-lasting. Through trial and error, he found out how to shape nylon fibres into tiny hooks and loops. When treated with heat, they retained their shape and became strong as well.

It took eight years of experiments for Mestral to perfect his invention. In the end, he proudly beheld a prototype made of two strips of nylon fabric that could be interlocked easily her by just pressing them together!

How Velcro Works:

Velcro consists of two complementary strips - one contains thousands of small hooks, the other has numerous small loops. When the strips are pressed together, the hooks slip into the loops, locking the stripes together. When the strips are pulled apart, the hooks are detached by force, which causes the ripping sound.

Mestral's invention is technically called the "hook and loop" tape. The modern day term, Velcro, is derived from two French words: velour (meaning velvet), and crochet (meaning hook).

Initially, Mestral saw Velcro as a replacement for zippers. It is strong, easily separated, durable, and doesn't jam like zippers. Velcro was thus first introduced in clothing. However, NASA scientists soon realised the massive potential of Velcro for space technology from fitting the astronauts' suits to anchoring equipment. Each space shuttle now has ten thousand inches of a special Velcro made of Teflon loops and polyester hooks!

The invention of Velcro is an example of man using nature as inspiration. Today Velcro is everywhere - from our shoes to nuclear reactors! And all this became a possibility, thanks to one man's curiosity about some seeds he saw during a walk!