Gideon Sundback (April 24, 1880 -- June 21, 1954) was a Swedish-American electrical engineer. Gideon Sundback is most commonly associated with his work in the development of the zipper.

In 1905, Gideon Sundback started to work at Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1906, Sundback was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company in Hoboken, New Jersey. In 1909, Sundback married Elvira Aronson, who was daughter of the Swedish born plant manager, Peter Aronsson. Subsequently Sundback was promoted to the position of head designer at Universal Fastener.
Sundback made several advances in the development of the zipper between 1906 and 1914, while working for companies that later evolved into Talon, Inc. He built upon the previous work of other engineers such as Elias Howe, Max Wolff, and Whitcomb Judson. He was responsible for improving the 'Judson C-curity Fastener'. At that time the company's product was still based on hooks and eyes. Sundback developed an improved version of the C-curity, called the 'Plako', but it too had a strong tendency to pull apart, and wasn't any more successful than the previous versions. Sundback finally solved the pulling-apart problem in 1913, with his invention of the first version not based on the hook-and-eye principle, the 'Hookless Fastener No. 1'. He increased the number of fastening elements from four per inch to ten or eleven. His inven.