Velcro was inspired by burrs that stuck to a hunter's trousers and were found under a microscope to have tiny hooks

science & techWikipedia1940s · Switzerland

Velcro was inspired by burrs that stuck to a hunter's trousers and were found under a microscope to have tiny hooks

the gist

Velcro's hook-and-loop fastener was invented by Swiss engineer George de Mestral after a bird hunting trip in the 1940s. He noticed that cockleburs had stuck stubbornly to his trousers and to his dog's fur. Looking at them under a microscope, he saw that each burr was covered in tiny hooks that caught on loops in fabric. He spent years developing a manufacturing method that could produce a reliable fastener from nylon. The product became a commercial success and is now used in clothing, footwear, medical devices and spacecraft. The story is a classic example of serendipity, where an everyday annoyance led to a widely used invention.

so what

Velcro shows how close observation of nature can solve engineering problems, a principle now called biomimicry, and it is a good example of how useful inventions can come from everyday frustrations.

fun fact

The name Velcro combines the French words velours (velvet) and crochet (hook).

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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