An Invention
It’s a little bit of magic. A gesture up and a seam comes together. A gesture down and a garment comes apart. The zip was one of the later fruits of the Industrial Revolution, and one that was slow to ripen: the internal combustion engine, the turbine and the light bulb spread across the globe much faster. On the other hand, the zip does not really have to improve, or be replaced. It was not born of radical new science or cunning craft, nor even of any deep need. It was simply a clever way of making something a bit easier that happened to catch on. In that sense, it is like thousands of workaday inventions that shift from novelty to necessity, without much song and dance, and end up hard to better.