Hook-and-loop fastener Mestral's patent expired, prompting a flood of low-cost imitations from Taiwan, China and South Korea onto the market. Today, the trademark is the subject of more than 300 trademark registrations in over 159 countries. George de Mestral was inducted into the national inventors hall of fame for his invention. The big breakthrough George de Mestral made was to think about hook-and-eye closures on a greatly reduced scale. Hook-and-eye fasteners have been common for centuries, but what was new about hook-and-loop fasteners was the miniaturisation of the hooks and eyes. Shrinking the hooks led to the two other important differences. Firstly,
GEORGE (operating system) the 1906/7. The branch was initially staffed with people being released by the end of work on the OMP operating system for the Ferranti Orion. The initial design of the new system, named George after George E. Felton head of the Basic Programming Division, was based on ideas from the Orion and the spooling system of the Atlas computer. (In public it was claimed that George stood for GEneral ORGanisational Environment, but contemporary sources say that was a backronym). In July 1965 a team from ICT was present at a seminar at NPL describing the CTSS operating system developed for