Velcro

RRRIP. That's me. You probably know my sound. I’m the one who holds your shoes tight and keeps your jacket closed on a windy day. Hello, I’m Velcro. I have two parts that are best friends. One side is a little scratchy, full of tiny little hooks. The other side is soft and fuzzy, covered in loops. When they touch, they hug each other super tight and don’t want to let go. To pull them apart, you have to give a good tug and I make my famous RRRIP sound. People think I'm a super clever idea, but my secret started with a man, his dog, and a very prickly walk through the woods. It was an adventure that stuck with him, and soon, I was sticking to everything else.

My story really begins with my creator, a smart engineer from Switzerland named George de Mestral. One day back in 1941, he went for a long walk in the beautiful Swiss Alps with his furry dog, Milou. The sun was shining, and birds were singing. They tromped through tall grass and past big trees, and Milou ran around sniffing every new smell. It was a perfect day. But when they got home, they were both a mess. George looked down and saw his pants were covered in little prickly balls, and poor Milou’s fur was full of them. They were burdock burs, and they stuck to everything like glue. George was a little annoyed as he started picking them off, one by one. But as he pulled, his brain, which was always thinking, started to wonder. 'How do these little things stick so well?'. He was so curious that he didn't throw them away. Instead, he took one of the burs and put it under his microscope to get a super-duper close look. What he saw was amazing. The bur was covered in hundreds of teeny-tiny hooks. These hooks were grabbing onto the little loops in the fabric of his pants and the loops in Milou's fur. It was nature’s own little secret for sticking things together. A big idea started to form in his head. What if he could copy that idea?

George was so inspired by those little burdock hooks. He thought, 'I can make that.'. But it wasn't easy. He spent years and years trying to create something just like it. He worked in a workshop, trying different materials to see what would work best. He wanted to make one side with hooks and another side with loops that could grab onto each other, just like the bur and the fabric. It took him a long, long time, but he never gave up. Finally, he discovered that a strong material called nylon was perfect for the job. He figured out how to weave nylon to make one strip with thousands of tiny, strong hooks, and another strip with thousands of soft, fuzzy loops. When you press them together, they lock tight. He was so proud. On September 13th, 1955, he showed his amazing invention to the world. He needed a name for me, so he took two French words: 'velours,' which means velvet, and 'crochet,' which means hook. He put them together and got 'Velcro.' That’s me.

At first, not everyone knew what to do with me. But then, some very special people found me very useful: astronauts. When they went into space where everything floats, they used me to stick their tools and food to the walls of the spaceship so they wouldn't float away. After that, everyone wanted to use me. Soon, I was making a RRRIP sound everywhere. I started helping kids tie their own shoes without tricky laces. I kept coats zipped up tight against the cold and held backpacks closed. You can even find me in hospitals helping doctors and nurses. It all started with a curious man who looked closely at nature. It just goes to show that sometimes the biggest ideas come from the smallest things, like a prickly bur stuck to a dog’s fur.