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We do have an idea, and all it took was a little online detective work. Searching Yahoo! using the keyword "Velcro," we found the Velcro Industries' home page. There we anxiously devoured The Story of Hook and Loop, which discusses the invention of the sticky stuff. After a walk in the woods, Swiss inventor George de Mestral noted the difficulty of removing burrs from his wool pants. This prompted him to examine them under a microscope, where he discovered that each burr was made up of tiny hooks that attached themselves to the loops of thread in the fabric. From there, de Mestral inferred that a manmade version of these "hooks and loops" would provide a simple, foolproof fastener.
He eventually devised a way to manufacture the product, patented the process, and called the concoction Velcro, from the words velvet and crochet (the French term for "hook"). To find out more, we took the name "George de Mestral" and poured it back into the Yahoo! search box. A few clicks later we were rewarded with the interestingly titled Useless Information: Zippers and Velcro. The page not only offers information on de Mestral's "locking tape," but also includes the story of the two inventors who came together to create the zipper.
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