During the war there was a great need for rapidly fixing wiring looms into aircraft. Many clamping devices were tried, but what people really wanted couldn't be made: Plastics injection moulding didn't advance until the 1950s. When it did, the first moulded cable ties started to appear around 1957, and they quickly settled down on the standard nylon design we still use today.

They may have been cutting-edge 50-years ago, but clearly we can do better.

For a start, half the cable tie gets chopped-off and thrown in the bin. And God help you if you ever have to remove the damned things!

These were the original problems rapstrap set out to solve. The bit you chop-off is now usable again and again until it runs out, and a fitted rapstrap is quick & easy to remove later on if required. Rapstraps are also easier to release, and the soft materials doesn't leave dangerous sharp edges. Check out these animations to see how it all works.

Everyone has some Sellotape® or similar product lying around. It was a French invention first produced in Britain in 1937 by coating natural rubber resin onto Cellophane tape. (Cellophane was another French invention from 1908.)

Slightly earlier inventions (1925-30) were paper masking tape and Scotch® tape, both produced by 3M's banjo-playing engineer Richard Drew. There have, of course, been numerous alternatives created since then.

On the plus side, tape is nice and cheap. For this reason, it's still a mainstay of stage wiring for many roadies out there, and it's also widely used on cable wiring looms for cars etc. However, it's not without its problems.

Finding the end of the reel is the first hurdle, and peeling it off again can be just as frustrating, especially if it leaves a sticky mess. It also exhibits the troublesome preference of sticking to itself, rather than everything you want it to.

This idea has been around since the stone age, when people fastened things with lengths of leather & plant fibre. Die-hards still use the technique, and many a top drawer contains a knotted ball of tangled string.

It may be cheap, but it isn't always cheerful, and perhaps its best use is for fastening really big objects where more convenient tie strips are not long enough to be effective.

Its other main benefit is that you only use what you need, saving the rest till later. But then again, that's exactly how rapstraps work, and they're a whole lot simpler to use.

Another classic from the mid 20th Century, Velcro® was invented by George de Mestral in 1948 as an alternative to Whitcomb Judson's slide fastener - commonly known as the zipper. (Later improved by Gideon Sundbach, and Katharina Kuhn-Moos & Henri Forster.)

de Mestral's idea was perfected in the mid 1950s, and by the 60s had evolved into tourniquets and clothing fasteners, especially for skiwear. The US Velcro® patent expired in 1979, and the concept succumbed to the sincerest form of flattery.

Along the way, the idea was turned into a device for tidying up messy cables, and today these kind of fabric tie strips are used quite extensively. Because they are easy to remove, they've become particularly suited for temporary fixings. And because they're softer than cable tie equivalents, they're also used a lot on high performance cables, where traditional ties can cause damage through crimping.

The downside is that they're hard to pull tight, so the grip is generally a bit sloppy. They also tend to be quite expensive (especially the branded versions), and like other cable tie strips, they can only form one loop. They also have an unfortunate habit of sticking together very easily - and to anything else around them that's fluffy.

The rubber band is possibly one of the simplest inventions of all time. They still draw a crowd.

Born out of the rubber industry, British inventor Stephen Perry patented the idea in 1845 and opened the first factory. It is thought, however, that Thomas Hancock - who apparently worked with Perry - may have been the actual creator in 1843.

(Later on, Ohio based William H. Spencer re-invented the concept in 1923 using old inner-tubes.)

Perry originally made the bands for binding papers and envelopes together, and it is still the largest single use, with the US Postal Service being the world's biggest consumer.

Aside from its simplicity, a rubber band's chief benefit is being soft & stretchy, which makes it extremely safe. Unfortunately, its applications are somewhat limited because the band is already a closed loop. This means you need a wide variety of sizes, and more importantly, they can only be fitted over the open end of something, not half-way along its length.

If only there was a soft & stretchy fastener you could just loop around and pull tight as required...