Author: Dan Maloney / Source: Hackaday
As a species, we’ve done a pretty good job at inventing some useful devices. But as clever as we think we are, given sufficient time, natural selection will beat us at our game at almost every turn. So it makes sense that many of our best inventions are inspired by nature and the myriad ways life finds to get DNA from one generation to the next.
Velcro is one such design cribbed from nature, and the story behind this useful mechanism is a perfect example that a prepared mind, good observation skills, and a heck of a lot of perseverance are what it takes to bring one of Mother Nature’s designs to market.
A Hike of Good Fortune
If you’re going to be inspired by natural mechanisms, it pays to be out in nature. During a hike in the Alps with his dog in 1941, George de Mestral, a Swiss electrical engineer, found his inspiration. He and the animal had picked up a multitude of burrs during their walk, and as George picked them out of the fur and off his clothes, he wondered how they managed to attach themselves so tenaciously.
For anyone unfamiliar with these unwelcome travelers, burrs are the spiky ripe fruit of any of a number of plants, most commonly the Burdock. The burrs are a dispersal strategy used by the plant to send its seeds far and wide by hitching a ride on the coat of a passing animal.
George put a burr under a microscope and was fascinated by what he saw. Each spike on the burr ended in a sharp point that looped back into a hook shape. Mixed in with the spikes were strands of the dog’s hair, knotted and tangled around the multitude of hooks. What’s more, the wool of his trousers and socks, standing out from the surface of his clothing as tiny loops, were the perfect medium to catch the burr’s hook.
In that moment, George found inspiration for a new kind of fastener, and he would labor for the better part of a decade perfecting his invention. Early prototypes using natural fibers worked, but…
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