Street railway Judson began his efforts of making inventions around 1888 to 1889. His concentration was on inventions for a "pneumatic street railway".
Zipper Judson's most noteworthy invention, a chain-lock fastener, was the precursor to the modern
zipper which he developed and invented in 1891. Judson is generally recognized as the inventor of the zipper. He also invented a "clasp-locker" automation production machine that made his fastener device inexpensively. His metal zipper fastener device was actually called a "clasp-locker" in his time; the name "zipper" was not actually coined or used until many years after his death. The "clasp locker" was a complicated hook-and-eye fastener with an arrangement of hooks and eyes run by a "guide" for closing and opening a clothing item. The first application was as a shoe fastener, and there is mention in the patents for possible applications for
corsets,
gloves,
mail bags, and "generally wherever it is desired to detachably connect a pair of adjacent flexible parts." It is also said one of the reasons he invented this device was to relieve the tedium of fastening high button boots that were fashionable in those days. The patent was approved in May 1893 after the last amendment was filed with an improved version. When the two patents were finally issued on August 29 (along with 378 others that day), they received the numbers U.S.P. 504,038 (first) and U.S.P. 504,037 (second). These patents describe several designs of the "clasp-locker". Later design patents of the fastener describe opposite elements on each side that are identical to each other and fit together by the engaging of "pintles" and "sockets." In his patent U.S.P. 557,207 of 1896 is a description mostly like the zipper of today. In 1893, Judson exhibited his new invention at the
Chicago World's Fair where it had its debut. Judson launched the
Universal Fastener Company to manufacture his new invention, together with Harry L. Earle and Lewis Walker. The Universal Fastener Company started out in Chicago and then moved to
Elyria, Ohio. It then moved to
Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, and then to
Hoboken, New Jersey. The name changed eventually to Automatic Hook and Eye Company. Judson's "clasp-locker" met with little commercial success at first. He ultimately never saw much success in the "clasp-locker" as a fashion item during his lifetime. Judson made a "C-curity" clasp-locker fastener in 1905 which was an improved version of his previous patents. It tended to break open unexpectedly like the predecessors. Clothing manufacturers showed little interest in Judson's fastener perhaps because of this reason. An improved version of 1896 came with Judson made his invention to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day as shows in his wording in the patent application. He describes this in his patent U.S.P. 557,207 In 1913, the zipper was improved by the Swedish American engineer,
Gideon Sundback, and also by Catharina Kuhn-Moos of Europe. Sundback successfully redesigned Judson's fastener into a more streamlined and reliable form called "Talon." Automatic Hook and Eye Company then changed its name to the Hookless Fastener Company. In 1937 the Hookless Fastener Company became Talon, Inc. In 1918, a
textile company manufactured flying suits for the
United States Navy with this fastener. Judson's company received an order for thousands of their "clasp-locker" fasteners. Soon thereafter they appeared on gloves and tobacco pouches. The
B. F. Goodrich company in 1923 installed these fasteners in their rubber
galoshes, calling the new design "Zippers." This then became the name of the fastener itself. The design of the fastener today is much like Sundback's improvement of Judson's "clasp-locker." ==Personal life==