Rolling Stones "Sympathy For The Devil"

This Week: Excerpts From That Novel I'm Never Going To Write.

20 pages after looking at buttons, I delve into the history of The Zipper.

I wrote 2 possible endings for this chapter. I think the first one is a little truer to the whole premise, but relies on a "The Rolling Stones Are Old" joke. The second ending is a little snappier. Your pick.


The Amish think that zippers are the tool of the Devil.

What makes anyone think that the Devil uses tools?

Hell is pretty well known for its natural phenomena—the molten lakes, the brimstone-singed air, the occasional snowball-—but in no depiction of Hell is there ever any mention of a fine, handcrafted wooden cabinet or lawnmower go-cart.

The Devil never built a birdhouse.

No, tool of the Devil seems wildly inappropriate.

Really, if the Devil has any handicraft, it’s in the culinary arts.

He’s responsible for deviled eggs, deviled ham and devil’s food cake, among other sinful delights.

Yes, “appliance of the Devil” would be far more appropriate than “tool.”

Or “utensil of the Devil.”

The Charlie Daniels Band came close to popularizing the phrase ‘Instrument of the Devil’ with their 1982 hit “Devil Went Down To Georgia.” But the plan backfired when the Devil blew the fiddle contest and violin playing subsequently became associated with weakness, i.e. non-mastery of the forces of darkness.

Leaving us stuck with the nonsensical “Tool of the Devil.”

Really, even if you believed that zippers were evil, aren’t they more of a “Gadget of the Devil”?

So let’s examine this contraption of the damned. Go ahead, look at your zipper.

For love of God, please tell me you aren’t reading this book naked.

Can you believe that the first place you looked is the last place anyone thought to put a zipper?

Well, they say that inventions rarely end up being used for what they were originally intended. Thomas Edison invented the phonograph so people would be able to recall the voices of the dead. An intended use that seems lost on today’s music fans. Unless you listen to The Dead.

In 1851, Elias Howe patented the "automatic, continuous clothing closure,” a precursor to the zipper, but got distracted when another of his inventions caught fire. After dousing the flames and clearing the smoke from his workspace, Howe completed and patented the sewing machine, which then figuratively caught fire among consumers.

It wasn’t until 44 years later that Whitcomb Judson created the “clasp locker” to replace those anachronistic “laces” in shoes. This complex eye-and-hook system-—only marginally like the zippers of today--was marketed by Judson’s own Universal Fastener Company, the place where in 1911 a young Gideon Sundback was making a name for himself as an electrical engineer. A recent widower, Gideon—-who knew the idle mind is the Devil’s playground--filled his lonely hours at the workbench. Two years later, he emerged from his grief with the familiar design that so frightens the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Yet to be called the “zipper” Sundback’s “Separable Fastener” set a zipping standard still adhered to today, consisting of about ten fastening elements per inch, with two facing rows of teeth that are pulled into a single piece by the slider.

It was the B.F. Goodrich Company that developed the name “Zipper,” using the Devil’s gadget on their rubber footwear. For reasons beyond modern comprehension, for the next twenty years zippers were used only on galoshes and tobacco pouches. It wasn’t until the 1930s that fashion designers put zippers on the crotch of children’s clothing. Soon zippers were replacing buttons on men’s “trousers.” Trousers, of course, would later be replaced by “slacks” during the Nixon administration, which would in turn be replaced by our modern day “pants.”

Through Howe, Judson and Sundback, from shoes to pouches to pants, the zippers’ journey from inception to acceptance took over eighty years.

The years following the trouser triumph have not been particularly eventful for the zipper. Oh sure, zippers can now be made of plastic and yes, they’re not just for the crotch anymore, but only one truly significant zipper innovation has occurred since the 1930s. That was The Rolling Stones 1971 release “Sticky Fingers,” which featured on the album cover an actual working zipper sewn into a photograph of leather pants.

(ending a)

Leaving it to the zipper to fulfill Edison’s promise of an invention that would help recall the voices of the dead.

(Note: as of this writing, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still alive, but I’m hoping that this book will be in print for a long, long time)

(ending b)

Perhaps that was just Sympathy For The Devil.