Short Stuff: Safety Pins

Safety pins are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. But that’s the genius of their design – they work so intuitively they might as well have come from nature. Instead, they were invented by a man who never went to the trouble of patenting them. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Shorty. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and there's Jerry. So let's get started. You must
be at least this tall to enjoy this podcast. Remember
the anxiety as a kid at amusement parks around that
I do you just wanted to be a little taller.
Now you look at it and you're like, wow, what
is that? Like? Is there are there? You know that's

(00:26):
there's kids that aren't that tall. It just seems so
short now. It was before it was like, oh man,
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

(00:47):
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

(01:09):
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.

(01:32):
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

(01:54):
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

(02:16):
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,

(02:38):
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,

(03:00):
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

(03:21):
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

(03:42):
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

(04:03):
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,

(04:28):
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

(04:50):
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,

(05:42):
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

(06:05):
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

(06:27):
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

(06:48):
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

(07:09):
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

(07:30):
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,

(07:50):
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,

(08:13):
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

(08:34):
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,

(08:58):
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

(09:21):
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,

(09:43):
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

(10:07):
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

(10:27):
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

(10:50):
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,

(11:12):
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