Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty by Robert Friedel

Abstract

1022 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE atomic bomb (with its genuinely apocalyptic terror) and the space launch (embodying a nostalgia for past certainty as it reconfirms be­ lief in human control of technology). As initially formulated by Edmund Burke in 1756, the aesthetic category of the sublime encompasses an emotional reaction to a natu­ ral phenomenon or landscape so awe-inspiring as to render an ob­ server speechless before its nearly terrifying transcendence of ordi­ nary reality. After describing straightforward Burkean reactions to such wonders of nature as Niagara Falls, Nye uses a discussion of the railroad to distinguish the “American technological sublime” from Burke’s natural sublime. The primary differences are an emphasis on dynamic motion (in addition to grand scale) and, especially sig­ nificant for a new democracy, the fact that crowds of Americans could share experiences created by national endeavor. It was no accident that the nation typically dedicated its most impressive engineering works, such as canals and bridges, on the Fourth of July. According to Nye, the technological sublime not only “conflated the preservation and the transformation of the natural world” (p. 37); it also “trans­ formed the individual’s experience of immensity and awe into a belief in national greatness” (p. 43). American Technological Sublime is the most complex and rewarding in a distinguished thirty-year tradition of general works exploring the tangled relationship of technology and culture in the United States. Even so, the ambitious scope of Nye’s undertaking almost guarantees a few problems. Moving forward to the present, he would like to argue that the technological sublime has become a matter of mere representation no longer connected to any technology in which a democratic people share real power. Some readers might conclude that the book’s final sections, addressing the rededication of the Statue of Liberty and the recently constructed attractions of Las Vegas, stretch Nye’s definition of the technological sublime to the breaking point, however much they might expose the evaporation of democratic experience. Even so, this is an impressive work, exhaus­ tively researched and elegantly written, that continually rewards thoughtful attention as it presents nothing less than a new synthesis of the meaning of technology in American culture. Jeffrey L. Meikle Dr. Meikle is professor of American studies and art history at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book is American Plastic: A Cultural History (Rutgers University Press, 1995). Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty. By Robert Friedel. New York: Nor­ ton, 1994. Pp. xiv + 288; illustrations, notes, index. $23.00. The zipper is such a common feature of life today that we take it for granted. But no compelling need, no technological imperative, no great social or political ambition drove us to zip our coats and TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1023 jeans. (Significantly, the device has no workable generic name in the language—it is not the slide fastener, it is the zipper.) As Robert Friedel notes early on in his study of this exemplary device, “buttons already worked.” It took nearly thirty years for society to decide that it needed the zipper, and the story of why it did carries Friedel’s book beyond the commonplaces of technological history. The zipper limped along for decades searching not only for a mar­ ket but for a place in consciousness. As engineers worked to improve on Whitcomb Judson’s 1893 idea, its promoters also searched for an appropriate name to replace the original “C-curity,” trying out and rejecting a variety of catchy monikers from Plako to Hookless. It was not until B. F. Goodrich Rubber put the number four model on galoshes that the name Zipper was invented. Even then, the name that today has the ring of inevitability was applied to the rubber boots, not the device that closed them. And not until 1937 did the breakthrough come for zippers in cloth­ ing. The Prince of Wales, soon to be king, and not much later to be Duke of Windsor, was much publicized when he wore a suit with a zipper. Around the same time, Elsa Schiaparelli made colored zippers part of fashion. James Thurber abetted in the marketing of the device by providing...