good question Dr bill about why a wrinkle an innovation.. I would like to think it is because some one over the age of 20 came up with a good idea, and good ideas got associated with some one old enough to have wrinkles...
but it might have come out of the garment trade-- where there is a process called "shrinking the marker"
a marker is pattern lay out. because some pieces of a pattern are large (say the back of a jacket) and other small (the under portion of a sleeve) and because fabric comes in set widths.. there is a special skill called marker making. cutting table in the industry are often 10 or 12 feet long.. (3 to 4 meters) and layout to make best use of fabric.
but the marker maker might not work in the same building or city as the cutter and factory (the actual cutting and sewing would be farmed out to jobbers) .. so the marker would be copied onto tissue paper, and mailed to jobber . Somewhere along the way, some one discovered that you could crumple the tissue paper, and then smooth it out.. and if you did, you might find the marker is now 2 or 3 inches shorter.. (not much over a 12 feet.. but if you are cutting 10 layers, you have 30 inches.. and if you cut 10 layers 10 times -- now you have 300 inches.. (and most lots of cuts are in 1,000 units, not hundreds...)
and so a wily jobber could cut an extra 10 or 20 or more extra "pieces"-- which the he (she) could sell else where.. (off label)
the reduction in the size of the finished garment would be very slight.. less than 0.5%...
i don't know any where else where a "wrinkle" is a way of cheating..
an aside-- in NY (elsewhere?) if you say you have a "factory job" it means you work in a garment factory.
if you work in some sort of other factory.. you specify.. (a paper bag factory..) plain old factory work is always sewing.
