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Velvet Type Fabric and Method of Producing Same
U.S. Patent 2,717,437 · 1955
From the abstract
The present invention has for its object a velvet type fabric and a method of producing the same. It is well known that velvet type fabrics consist of a base fabric with longitudinal warp loops projecting therefrom, said loops being in some cases cut to constitute a pile...
Note
Velcro. De Mestral, a Swiss engineer, had walked his Irish pointer through an Alpine meadow in 1941 and spent the rest of the day picking burrs from the dog's coat. Under a microscope he saw the hooks. It took him eight years to find a textile mill willing to weave the matched hook-and-loop pair, and another decade to commercialize it. The name combines the French velours (velvet) and crochet (hook). NASA used it on the Apollo missions to keep equipment from floating off; that, more than any earthly application, made it famous.