Safety Pins

I hope I measure up. You'd like grow your hair out, ye to like make that extra like half inch or something like that. Get your blow outcome, get your throw up high. That's exactly right. Although remember my story is that I was scared of roller coasters until my father finally said, I'm not taking you back here and paying this money until you get on a roller coaster, and then you weren't scared. Well, no, I just went on because I was like, I don't want to not come back.

And then I loved it, of course, but he he rolled the dice there, did you? Yeah? My dad took me on Space Mountain when I was like five or something. Like that, and I hate roller coasters as a result. Yeah, I'm not big on it. You same, basically the same thing happened to you me. I don't remember how old she was, but um it was Space Mountain her dad, and um we uh we went back to Space Mountain like years ago to to conquer it, to conquer our fears, and we did. We did it. You got hammered it

in Tomorrowland and got a board. But that has nothing to do with safety pins. No, it doesn't. No safety pins. Actually of a totally different, equally engrossing story, there was a guy who's actually known as the inventor of the safety pin, chiefly because he invented the safety pin. His name is Walter Hunt, and there's a lot of different interpretations of Walter Hunt. I think this house Stuff Works article kind of misses the mark a little bit. So

he was one of America's great nineteenth century inventors. Number one, um number two. He invented the safety pin. Which is that just if he had just invented the safety pin, that would be something. But he invented the safety pin back in eighteen forty nine. And if you look at his safety pin invention and the safety pin that you would go by today. It's virtually the same thing. Like the guy right out of the gate invented a perfect version of his invention. Yeah, and this is one of those.

It's so brilliant and its simplicity. As I imagine, he was just tinkering around with some wire, coiled it around itself and said, hey, that acts as its own spring, so it doesn't need to be two pieces, which is sort of the genius of a safety pin. And then the little clasp, the little safety class. That's why it's called a safety pin keeps little fingers and big fingers, I guess, and toes and toes from getting pricked and stuck.

And uh, it was just a genius little idea. Yeah, was so he The legend goes that he was fiddling around with that wire and inadvertently invented the safety pin while he was just kind of keeping his hands busy trying to figure out how to pay off a fifteen dollar debt. It could not find what the debt was for, but it was to a pal Okay, so okay, we'll go with that. But then when he figured out this this safety pin was a pretty good idea, he went

and patented it. But then he sold the patent to either that friend or somebody else to pay off the fifteen dollar debt. But he sold it for like four hundred bucks. Which did you do the calculation there? No? What is that today? I didn't? Do? You want me to just talk for a minute while while you type? I do? Can you do a little tap dance? Yeah? But the point is is that four dollars back then, and we'll get the number in a sec was it was a great deal of money, but obviously nothing compared

to the riches that would have Befallen Walter Hunt. Had he held onto that patent, it would be known as the Hunt pin today probably, and he would his his great great grandkids would be billionaires. Still, I would imagine, oh yeah, if he if he earned royalties from it, um and they had kept up the patent, heck, yes, or the trademark or something. I'm not sure how they would do it, but I do have a number, Chuck, it's about twelve thousand dollars, which bad. It isn't bad,

but so here's the thing. So the guy sold off his patented idea. Sometimes he's reported as not even having patented it. Just sold the idea, which is wrong. Um. But so he sold the patent for just twelve grand um. He's often very much characterized as like shortsighted. Um. Maybe just maybe just like an absent minded inventor type or something like that. Okay, maybe you can say that with the safety pin. But he he also invented something pretty huge to the sewing machine. And this is where it

gets kind of like a little cloudy to me. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's all right, we'll clear the clouds out and we'll be back right after this. Okay, so the clouds are still over us, Chuck, we're about to part them. Okay, I thought you were about to say, we're gonna rain down some knowledge. Oh that's way better. We should. We should retake this part cloudy with a

chance of knowledge. So so Walter Hunt invented the sewing machine actually back in you a good almost twenty years before he invented the safety pin, and it had like a curved eye needle had to shuttle, just basically like the Singer sewing machine would later be. He invented it decades before anybody else was making these sewing machines. And so yet again he's criticized for selling this idea without pending it or patenting it and not doing anything with it.

He the story I saw was that he did come up with this idea, and his daughter pointed out that this machine would put a lot of um impoverished women out of work, which worked a sewers, and he said, oh well, I'm not gonna do anything with this, and chose not to patent it and abandoned the idea so that it wouldn't even be out there for anybody else to pick up and and work with. Did he destroy his machine? From what I saw, he didn't even make this prototype. I didn't see that anywhere else but in

this article. Yeah, because in our our own article it even specifically says his prototype was wooden, which would lead me to believe that unless someone just you know, was willing, nillly making things up, that's got to be true, right, I don't know, but this is what I'm saying. Things are clouded. We we parted them some and then they

came back, all right. But either way, the reason that you look at sewing machines today and don't see the word hunt on them is just another sort of chink in his armor as a really brilliant guy who didn't see the big picture economically or didn't want to put poor women out of work? Right, did I just overlook that? Yes, so you're saying it was noble. That's that's how I'm

taking it. Well, I hope, so that would be a great you know, I like that better than I didn't think it was very good, right, exactly because it was made of wood. If he did prototype it, I'll say, yes, it was probably made of would. But the reason why it's a Singer, uh, is because a man named Isaac Singer came along. There were actually two dudes, two businessmen, allies How Isaac Singer, and they were in a battle with each other to control this patent in the eighteen fifties.

So what I couldn't tell is if they legit invented the saying or if they ripped off Hunt somehow. Yeah, not they It would have been Elias How He was the one who held the patent, and Isaac Singer was just making machines based on the same designs ignoring How's patent because for some reason, somehow he knew that um that it was actually William Hunt who had invented the

sewing machine decades before. So they went to court and Isaac Singer said, Hunt, come in here and demonstrate that you you did this, and you can get the patent, and then I'll ignore your patent too, And the judge actually ruled that he that, yes, William Hunt was indeed the inventor of the sewing machine, but it was too late to retroactively file a patent. I wonder if there's

enough here for a movie. They made one about the guy who who created the intermittent setting on the windshie wipers, and they made one what's her face Jennifer Lawrence was in the movie about the inventor Lady, Oh yeah, Joey man Ghana. Yeah, So maybe there's enough here. It would like call it so what And at the end of the trailer it's spelled out and you would hear the sewing machine and it would sew it out the title I don't, I don't. Maybe maybe this should just be

a trailer. So what seems like a working title right that, like some producer comes in and changes and gets paid a billion dollars for it. Right then it would be called the Isaac Singer Follies So the other thing about Walter Hunt, he invented plenty of other stuff to a foot pedal alarm to warn people the street car was coming, uh for sure, an antipodean walking device. Yeah, and that I had no idea what that was. But apparently it's

like the human fly, like suction cup shoes. It's pretty amazing and today, well not today, but say back in the seventies, if you hung out with punks, you probably saw a lot of safety pins. And you can thank Walter Hunt for that little fashion accessory too. Yeah, what was the deal they would It was just you would put a bunch of safety pins. I was not cool enough to do that stuff. So so there's a dispute over who came up with this. Supposedly Richard hell one

of the original punk rockers. He accessorized a lot, and he accessorized with safety pins. So some people say, well as Richard Hellett came up with it, but apparently Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols has disputed that and said that it was actually out of necessity to keep the rs on your trousers from falling off because they just wore beat up clothes. Yeah, because they were gutter punks. Didn't people actually put safety pins through their face? Some

people did. Walter Hunt did not like that. His ghost was very upset by this um, but no one could see that. Wow. So from the safety pin to the sewing machine too, said Vicious. Yeah, that's the logical order of operation. Really, it's American inventors. Toda. Uh if you want to you got anything else? No, I just know that I want to go out and get some antibody and choose. Now I do too. Man, you just climb up a building and say thank you, William Hunt. Uh,

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