Velcro
Swiss engineer George de Mestral invented Velcro, the hook-and-loop fastener, after a 1941 walk in the Alps inspired him to copy burdock burrs.
In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral came home from a walk in the Alps covered in cockleburs, the small spiky seed pods that stubbornly cling to fabric and dog fur alike. Instead of just picking them off, he put one under a microscope to see exactly how it grabbed on.
What he found was a field of tiny hooks that caught on the small loops of thread in his clothing. It took him roughly a decade of experimentation with weaving machines and synthetic fibers before he landed on a durable, mass-producible hook-and-loop fabric, patented around 1954 under the name Velcro, a blend of the French words velour and crochet.
Even after the patent, adoption was a gradual thing. It took NASA's adoption of the fastener for zero-gravity equipment in the 1960s before Velcro shed its reputation as a novelty and became the default fastener, and arguable the most prolific example of biomimicry in use today.
George de Mestral invented Velcro, inspired by clingy seeds from a walk in the Alps. Less than fifteen years after its patenting, it was shot into space to help keep astronauts and their equipment securely stowed.