Sometimes an invention begins in a laboratory.

Sometimes it begins with picking burrs off a dog.

In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral was outdoors with his dog when he noticed something irritatingly familiar: Burrs had attached themselves to his clothing and the dog’s fur. Most of us would pull them off, complain a little, and forget about them.

De Mestral got curious.

Instead of simply throwing the burrs away, he examined them under a microscope. What he discovered was an ingenious design courtesy of nature. The burrs were covered with tiny hooks that grabbed the loops in fabric — and caught just as effectively in his dog’s fur.

That gave the engineer an idea: What if he could reproduce the same system?

De Mestral envisioned two pieces of material, one covered with tiny hooks and the other with loops. Press them together and they would hold. Pull them apart and they could be used again.

Simple idea. Not-so-simple execution.

It took years of experimentation to turn his observation into a practical product. De Mestral eventually found that nylon worked better than the materials he initially tried. He filed for Swiss patent protection in 1951, received a Swiss patent in 1954 and a U.S. patent followed in 1955.

He called his creation Velcro, combining parts of two French words: “velours,” meaning velvet, and “crochet,” meaning hook.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame dates the inspirational walk to 1941 and identifies de Mestral’s dog as an Irish Pointer; Velcro Companies gives the same year and says the burrs were from burdock plants.

Today, VELCRO® Brand fasteners are so familiar that the brand name is commonly used for the entire category, although the generic product is properly called a hook-and-loop fastener.

And it all traces back to something most dog owners have experienced — bringing home a dog with unwanted pieces of the outdoors attached.

There may be a lesson tucked inside this Bizarre Byte.

The next time your dog comes home covered in burrs, don’t get irritated too quickly.

Take a closer look.

You might be holding your million-dollar idea.

Bizarre Bytes gives us those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or to stump your in-laws.

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