Zip fasteners are such a great invention. How could they ever be improved upon?
Well, if you happen to be standing on a mountain in a rising gale with an urgent need to seal out the weather, suddenly having the zip of your coat jam is a potentially life-threatening situation. This normally happens when some soft material on one side of the zip somehow gets in the way of its motion and brings the process to a sudden halt.
Today’s invention is a ‘snow-plough’ for zippers.
In its simplest form it could be implemented as just a duplicate ‘keeper’ running ahead of the one actually attempting to close the zip. If this clogs on surrounding fabric, it alerts the user to the problem just in time to allow the main keeper not to be fouled.
The snowplough keeper would be made of some form of plastic which could be simply broken off, releasing the jammed material and allowing much closer monitoring of the future progress of the main keeper.
