From yesterday's Ottawa Xpress:

"He named the invention-"special napped piles of man-made material with some of these loops having the means of hooking near their ends"-XXXXXX, a combination of two French words: "velour," for velvet, and "crochet," for the hooks, and secured patents around the world."

What's the invention (I replaced the word with X's, in case you're confused)? Mad props to all those who leave the correct answer in the comments.

(By the way, commenting is up to full force again, thanks to the widespread effort on the parts of Movable Type and other blogging providers, and Google, that mammoth do-gooder search engine. Now that comment spammers won't get any return for their evil deeds maybe they'll quit and start directing their energies toward a more productive outlet -- say, teaching kids to read or cleaning up the world's waterways or something.)