Velcro Velcro Velcro BVBA is a privately held company that produces fasteners and other products. It is known for being the original patentor of the hook-and-loop fastener, to which it has (over its objections) lent the generic name "velcro." Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral invented his first touch fastener when, in 1941, he went for a walk in the woods and wondered why Burdock seeds clung to his coat and dog. He discovered it could be turned into something useful. He patented it in 1955 and subsequently refined and developed its practical manufacture until its commercial introduction in the late
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