Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1874 — An Essay on “Pins.” [ARTICLE]

An Essay on “Pins.”

A pin is an insignificant thing; but the pin has a history and is of great antiquity. By whom invented or when is past finding out, but certain it is it has been in use from a very early period. As far back as civilization extends the pin can be traced. The grandfather of them all was found in a British burrows among the relics of the time of Strabo, who was a historian of the Augustan age, five years before the birth of our Lord. This pin is of iron, an eighth of a yard in length, and has for a head two wings in which are fastened two other movable wings. It is supposed to have boen used as a fastening for a mantle. There seems to have been a difference between the British and the Roman pin, leading us to believe in the pin’s existence before Britain had a history, before the invasion of Julius Ciesar.

Pins made of bone are constantly unearthed in British burrows, and one exhumed in Kent, England, has a stem of brass, with a head of gold, and ornamented with red and blue stones and filagree work. We are told that before the invention of pins, or probably before they were in general use, both sexes used for holding together parts of the dress loopholes of lace, ribbons, hooks and eyes, etc., etc. During the thirteenth century, when Edward L was King, the women made use of pins to fasten oyerthe ears the unlovely garment, the fashion of that period, which was also raised at the bottom with pins, which weie of a clumsy size and made of bone. In 1488, pins were first mentioned in the statutes as an article of commerce and in 1540 Catharine Howard, Queen of Henry VIII., imported brass pins from France. Pins were not of English manufacture until three years later. The ladies of the court of James I. used pins with pearl heads and otherwise richly ornamented. The pin of our acquaintance was first made by filing a point to a proper length of wire, and at the other end twisting finer wire, so as to form a head. There still exist pins of this construction. Fourteen persons were required in the manufacture of a single pin—-the first, to straighten and cut the wire; the second, to point; the third, to cut into requisite lengths; the fourth, to twist the heads; the fifth, to cut the heads, which is a work oi great rapidity, at the rate of 12,000 heads an hour; No. 6 annealed, or softened, the heads, in order to be sharpened by No. 7, who transferred them to No. 8 to be cleaned and colored; No. 9 next proceeded to whiten with a preparation of cream-tartar; No. 10- was the washer; No. 11 the dryer and polisher. To dry, the pins were thrown into a large leather bag containing bran and were violently shaken by two men. No. 12 did the winnowing—that is, the separation of the pins from the bran. By machinery No. 18 prepared the pihpapers, which, according to the size of the pins, were punched into folds, and at the same time holes were pricked to receive the pins, which were put into their places by No. 14, and then we had a paper of pins ready for sale.: This Operation was capable of much improvement, and in 1824 an American, Lemuel Wellman Wright, invented the first machine to obviate hand-labor. Since then many remarkable improvements have been invented, very complicated in detail, and are wonderful pieces of mechanism, the action being beautifully simple, and completing, without the aid of the old fourteen hands, a pin in all respects but color and polish. After said processes our modem pins are prepared for papering by two children—one to feed the machine with pins, the other with papers; and by some indescribable means the pins are forced into the places Drepared for them. Thus, you see, the subject of “ pins,” which seems beggarly enough, furnishes good material for an exhaustive essay. But to bear any more on this subject I suppose you “don’t care a pin.”— N. Y. Graphic.