Whitcomb L. Judson Whitcomb L. Judson Whitcomb L. Judson (March 7, 1846 – December 7, 1909) was an American machine salesman, mechanical engineer and inventor. Judson invented the zipper in the 1890s. Judson was born in Chicago, Illinois. According to the 1860 census, he lived in Illinois, and served in the Union army. He enlisted in 1861 at Oneida, Illinois in the Forty-Second Illinois Cavalry. Judson attended Knox College in his hometown Galesburg, Illinois. He was found in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1886. In 1886 and 1887 the Minneapolis city directory identifies Judson as a "traveling agent" — a traveling salesman working probably for
Hermes Fastening his Sandal has retained its head and has escaped the eighteenth-century Roman restorers; it is now conserved at the Acropolis museum, Athens. Other variants include sculptures in similar, but reversed mirror-image poses, probably intended as pendants to the "Hermes Fastening his Sandal". The theme was taken up by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle in 1744, and by François Rude, who showed at the Paris salon of 1828 a "Mercury Fastening his Sandal" in plaster. Rude's god instead shows the influence of Giambologna’s famous "Mercury" (c. 1580; Florence, Bargello) Hermes Fastening his Sandal The sculptures of Hermes Fastening his Sandal, which exist in several versions, are