Velcro: even the name suggests space age invention…they had to spend $50 billion and fly to the moon to get Teflon but Velcro was inspired by the burrs on a common plant.
It may be heretical, but it can still be damned annoying stuff…for example when the cuffs of one’s mountain jacket get caught in the storm flap (which still needs a zip to keep the edges aligned vertically). This is especially irritating when a storm is actually about to break and the required item gets dragged from the corner of a rucksack in which it has been busily turning itself into a knot.
Today’s invention makes this impossible by locating the velcro patches within a slightly raised plastic wall-each of which has a unique shape. This effectively stops a star shaped hooks patch making contact with a square shaped loops patch -and similarly, only a triangle shaped hooks patch can fit inside, and bond to, a triangle shaped loops patch.
This natural alignment opens up the possibility of closing a rainproof coat using only velcro (ie without an underlying zip).