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
Arthur Judson Taubman alleged over-hiring of Columbia artists at the New York Philharmonic and may have encouraged the seventy-five-year-old Judson to resign from that post. One singer Arthur Judson did not represent (but probably should have) was Margaret Truman, daughter of President Harry S. Truman. In 1948, Margaret's agent, James A. Davidson, listened to her complaints about getting few bookings. She learned from Davidson that concerts in the U.S. were largely controlled by Columbia and the National Concert Artists Corporation. Margaret told her father what she had heard, and the president requested the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigate. In October 1955, the