This is who invented the zip tie and the zip ties unofficial birthday.
Believe it or not, 2019 marked 60 years since the zip tie was first assigned a US Patent on June 24,1958 to be exact. The Cable tie or zip tie, as we know it today, was invented by American engineer Marcus C Logan of the Thomas and Betts Corp originally based out of Memphis, Tennessee.
The story goes that, while working for the Thomas and Betts Corp and touring a Boeing aircraft plant, he observed how hard it was for workers making planes to tie together the thousands of feet of wire necessary to make a plane operational.
If you’ve ever tied together a package with string the old fashioned way, bundled together all your camping supplies on the roof of your car, or rolled up a bundle of sticks for a small fire, you’ve only gotten a small taste at how hard it was to bundle together aircraft grade wiring.
According to the Swedish Conglomerate that purchased Thomas and Betts a couple years ago and on the 60th anniversary of the cable tie,
He (Logan) knew there had to be a better way, so he entered the lab and emerged two years later with his invention: the Ty-Rap cable tie, the world’s first self-clinching cable tie.
The patents are publicly available online for anyone to see and are readily accessible thanks to Google Patents. Here are the original patents as they appear below.
The description for the patents reads,
“Supports for pipes, cables or protective tubing, e.g. hangers, holders, clamps, cleats, clips, brackets specially adapted for supporting a number of parallel pipes at intervals for a bundle of pipes or a plurality of pipes placed side by side in contact with each other by means of a flexible band”
Of course, the zip ties from 60 years ago look nothing like the zip ties we have today yet the principle behind how they work remains exactly the same. Once the slender end of the zip tie is inserted through the ratcheting mechanism on one end, the tie can no longer be pulled back out, only pulled tighter thanks to tiny slates or gear racks raised on the tie itself.
Thomas and Betts still makes zip ties under their proprietary name, the Ty Rap. Of course, its design has been copied the world over and is available at any local hardware store, auto parts store, and big box chain in within a stone’s throw of where you live.
They come in all lengths, strengths, resistance to UV exposure, and materials, the most common ones being the nylon variety. And their ubiquity in the automotive world for quick repairs, both short term and long, is unparalleled. They are a necessary tool for any mechanic at all levels. (Yours truly has a bumper held up by zip ties.)
So, we salute you Marcus Logan, inventor of the zip tie and savior to us all when we need to tie something together at a moment’s notice and are sure it won’t fall apart.
Every June 24, I hope you join me in celebrating National Zip Tie day!
Source: ABB
Bul*****. The modern zip tie was invented by someone else and is not a copy of the one mentioned in this article nor is the name. I am the man who invented modern zip ties and I was a young kid when I did so.
Hi. I’d love to do a follow-up to this blog of some sort per your comment. Can you point me in the right direction or have any documentation you can send my way maybe? My e-mail is paulo.acoba@gmail.com