Was Loud’s ballpoint pen patented before Sundback’s zip fastener?

The ballpoint pen feels like a twentieth-century invention, while zips seem to have been on clothes forever, so it is tempting to put the zip first. In this duel the pen wins by almost three decades. John J. Loud was granted a US patent for a ballpoint pen on 30 October 1888, a tool for marking rough surfaces. Gideon Sundback’s patent for the modern zip fastener, with rows of small interlocking teeth packed closely together, was granted in March 1917. There were earlier clasp fasteners before Sundback’s, and ballpoint pens only became everyday objects decades after Loud’s patent, so the order depends on which milestone you compare. Here both are named US patents, and Loud’s came 29 years before Sundback’s; neither object became common until years after its patent.