As a species, we’ve done a pretty good job at inventing some useful devices. But as clever as we think we are, given sufficient time, natural selection will beat us at our game at almost every turn.

Hook and loop fasteners made of spring steel -- similar to Velcro devices but much stronger -- have been developed by researchers in Germany. These fasteners are resistant to chemicals, and can ...

Born in the tiny town of Saint-Saphorin-sur-Morges in 1907, George de Mestral filed his first patent at the age of 12, for a toy airplane. “He was driven to invent,” says Fraser Cameron, president and ...

The U.S. Army has a problem with Velcro. It’s too noisy. And its little loops get clogged with dust from the Afghan and Iraqi deserts. The so-called “hook-and-loop” fastener was added to standard ...

[Teaching Tech’s] latest video discusses “3D printed Velcro.” But as even he admits, Velcro is a trademark, so we think it is more appropriate to talk about hook and loop fasteners. In fact, you can ...

Engineer George de Mestral was walking his dogs in the meadows of the Swiss Alps. When they returned home, he noticed that burr seed pods were stuck on his dogs’ fur! He even found some stuck to his ...

An interdisciplinary research team at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) has developed a hook-and-loop fastening system for buildings in the ReCon project together with company partners. This ...

Hook and loop fasteners have become commonplace features of both industry and households. However, they have one snag: they are too weak for many applications. Hook and loop fasteners made of spring ...