that was at what is today Georgia Avenue. It ran for only a few weeks before the company shut it down due to technical problems. A cable streetcar firm bought them out and turned it into an electric streetcar since Judson's system was impractical. Zipper Judson's most noteworthy invention, a chain-lock fastener, was the precursor to the modern zipper which he developed and invented in 1891. Judson is generally recognized as the inventor of the zipper. He also invented a "clasp-locker" automation production machine that made his fastener device inexpensively. His metal zipper fastener device was actually called a "clasp-locker" in his time; the name "zipper" was not actually coined or used until many years after his death. The "clasp locker" was a complicated hook-and-eye fastener with an arrangement of hooks and eyes run by a "guide" for closing and opening a clothing item. The first application was as a shoe fastener, and there is mention in the patents for possible applications for corsets, gloves, mail bags, and "generally wherever it is desired to detachably connect a pair of adjacent flexible parts." It is also said one of the reasons he invented this device was to relieve the tedium of fastening high button boots that were fashionable in those days. Judson's first slide fastener patent was applied for in November 1891. At the time the United States Patent Office didn't require a working model of a patent, only that the invention was to be a novel idea. However, his invention was almost rejected by the patent assistant examiner Thomas Hart Anderson because there were several types of shoe fasteners already patented. He applied for a second patent on an improved version for the same item some nine months later before the first was even approved. The patent was approved in May 1893 after the last amendment was filed with an improved version. When the two patents were finally issued on August 29 (along with 378 others that day), they received the numbers U.S.P. 504,038 (first) and U.S.P. 504,037 (second). These patents describe several designs of the "clasp-locker". Later design patents of the fastener describe opposite elements on each side that are identical to each other and fit together by the engaging of "pintles" and "sockets." In his patent U.S.P. 557,207 of 1896 is a description mostly like the zipper of today. In 1893, Judson exhibited his new invention at the