The "sliding engaging fastener" is one man's effort to improve on which popular fastener?

Zbeckabee

This new and improved Velcro still has the same goal in mind - to bind two items together, but it doesn't have all the shortcomings of the original Velcro: noisy when it's pulled apart, absorbs moisture, wears out quickly, catches on to hair and fabrics, etc. Leonard Duffy, a 66 year old architect, is the inventor of this reinvented Velcro. What he invented is 8 times stronger and much more durable than the original. Best of all, it is much quieter too. Anyone trying to open something with Velcro quietly knows how impossible that is. Mr. Duffy calls his innovation "sliding engaging fastener". His invention has "‘islands' with undercut edges that self-align then slide into interlocked positions, resisting shear and uplift." So instead of a hook and a loop to connect to each other, there are shapes with special cut edges that slide and hold each other in place. For more details on how it actually works, you can see his U.S. Patent 5983467 at freepatentsonline. http://inventorspot.com/reinvented_velcro Jul 11 10, 2:17 PM