The slide-fastener campaign, 1928–1931: the works takes on the zipper

1928–1931 · CLASS 1 · THE FASTENER PATENTS AT FULL SIZE

The campaign: The densest single subject in the works' whole patent record is not a boot. It is the slide fastener — the zipper — and between the autumn of 1928 and the end of 1931 the Mishawaka company took out fastener paper at a rate that reads, in the annual lists, like a firm determined to own the closure of the rubber boot. The context is the trade's own: the parent company had put the word "Keds" on canvas shoes and a slide fastener on its rubber footwear under the "Fastener" name in the 1920s, and a boot that closed with a slider instead of laces wanted patents at every joint — the slider, the teeth, the waterproof seam behind them, the lock that kept the slider shut.

Blair's fastener grants: George W. Blair's run, all assigned to the Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen Manufacturing Company: No. 1,712,976, "Fastener"; No. 1,720,314, "Fastening device"; No. 1,721,144, "Lock for quick-operating fasteners"; No. 1,725,749, "Waterproof seam and making same"; No. 1,730,553, "Making fastener elements"; No. 1,732,787, "Fastening device"; No. 1,739,500, "Automatic fastener"; and No. 1,740,763, "Slider-operated fastener and means for assembling and aligning the elements" — eight grants in 1929 alone. In 1930: No. 1,775,232, "Sectional fastener"; No. 1,775,418, "Fastening device"; No. 1,775,419, "Fastener"; No. 1,776,847, "Quick-operating fastener"; No. 1,776,848, "Fastening device"; and No. 1,777,137, "Flexible reenforcing." In 1931: No. 1,794,139, "Slider-operated fastener"; No. 1,801,324, "Quick operating fastener"; No. 1,801,325, "Apparatus for making fastener sliders"; No. 1,809,667, "Fastener with lateral clearance"; No. 1,813,227, "Slider"; and No. 1,837,011, "Fastener." Twenty Blair fastener grants in three years, beside the Bradley and Van Dinter fastener-covering paper of December 1928 that opens the campaign.

The rest of the fastener bench: Conrad Ferrettie, No. 1,707,390, "Self-closing shoe," of 2 April 1929. John B. Kennedy and A. H. De Groote, No. 1,720,080, "Fastener," of 9 July 1929. August H. De Groote alone, No. 1,837,021, "Fastening device," of 15 December 1931. Emmett A. Saunders — printed of South Bend in these entries — No. 1,726,965, "Quick-operating fastener," of 3 September 1929; No. 1,820,327, "Fastener," of 25 August 1931; and No. 1,834,225, "Quick operating fastener," of 1 December 1931. Eugene M. Giles, printed of Western Springs, Illinois, No. 1,837,036, "Fastening device," of 15 December 1931 — and Giles's name carries its own disclosure: the signature "By Eugene M. Giles, Atty" stands on the Blair patents of the campaign, so the company's own patent attorney appears in the lists once as a named inventor, printed exactly as the record prints him, an attorney-inventor in the middle of his client's campaign. At residence strength, William D. Peiffer and O. D. Harris of Mishawaka, assignors of one-third to N. S. Amstutz of Valparaiso, No. 1,741,789, "Separable fastener," of 31 December 1929 — the fastener idea loose in the town, not just in the plant.

The acquired paper, printed as acquired: Twice in 1930 the lists carry reissues of Martin Winterhalter of Halle-an-der-Saale, Germany — Reissue Nos. 17,865 and 17,881, for fastenings of wearing apparel and fabrics — assigned by mesne assignments to the Mishawaka Rubber and Woolen Manufacturing Company. These are purchases, not plant work: European fastener paper the company acquired and reissued in its own name while its own men patented around the same joints. They are in the roster because the assignee line is the company's; they are labeled acquired in every place they are named, and they are the roster's clearest picture of the campaign's seriousness — the works bought paper abroad while it made paper at home.

The Saunders question, stated in the open: The fastener entries force the identification this section owes the reader. The banked Ball Band record names an "E. A. Saunders" as a superintendent of the works. The patent lists give an Emmett A. Saunders who designs a boot from Mishawaka in 1914 (Design No. 46,548) and patents three slide fasteners into the Mishawaka company from South Bend in 1929–1931. The initials, the firm, and the subjects all match, and the identification is the natural reading of the two records; but no document the search reached states in words that the superintendent and the patentee are the same man, so this section prints the records side by side and flags the identification rather than merging it in silence. If they are one man — as they very likely are — then a Ball Band superintendent was among the works' repeat patentees across seventeen years, in designs and in the fastener war alike.

Sources:

1. Index of Patents Issued, 1928–1931 — the fastener grants as itemized; the Winterhalter reissues in the 1930 reissue list, "by mesne assignments" as printed.
2. U.S. Patent No. 1,271,843 and the Blair fastener faces as sampled on Google Patents — the attorney signature "By Eugene M. Giles, Atty" on the campaign's applications.
3. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Patents, design list, 1914 — Saunders, Design No. 46,548, "Boot," printed of Mishawaka; the superintendent's name as the banked Ball Band file carries it, the identification flagged, not merged.