Walter Hunt: No Pin Money

The other day, I had to attach a bunch of oak leaves to a hat, and I ended up using safety pins to do it. That made me wonder who invented the safety pin. I thought maybe the idea came from a woman who had to diaper babies.

That doesn't appear to be the case (though there may be more back-story). The safety pin was invented and patented by a successful early 19th century inventor named Walter Hunt. It was one of many things I have heard of that he invented.

As a person from rural or small-town New York State, I'm happy to report that Hunt was the same, though he was what we would call a true Upstate New Yorker: He was from the western Adirondacks, about 30 miles east of Watertown.

Though he studied masronry, his first inventions, in the mid-1820s, were practical improvements related to spinning and processing flax, since he and many people he knew worked in a flax mill in their town.

By the time he was close to 30, he visited New York City for the first time. After witnessing a child being run over by a horse-drawn carriage, he invented a foot-operated bell with a "clobber hammer" that was used on trolleys and street cars for the next century and more.

After patenting the bell, he and his family moved to New York City. He sold the bell's rights to a stagecoach operator. That became a pattern for his later patents: Hunt did not retain rights and generally did not get royalties from the companies he sold to.

The list of his inventions could populate a 19th century wood engravings catalog. A couple of the most notable ones:

• The "first modern feasible operating sewing machine," which used a lockstitch: This was 20 years before Elias Howe's invention. According to two sources on the Wikipedia page, "Hunt did not seek a patent for his sewing machine at the time because he worried it would create unemployment with seamstresses."
• Paper shirt collars: These turned out to be very popular, and in this case Hunt did negotiate royalty payments, but the big sales came after he died in 1859.
• Antipodean Performers: These are suction-cup shoes that circus performers use to walk up walls and even go upside down across ceilings. (That's probably my favorite among his inventions, though not used nearly as much as many of the others.)
  

I still wonder if Hunt's wife, who birthed four children, or his mother, who birthed 12, had a hand in the idea for the safety pin. 

Either way, though, Hunt and his family didn't make much from the pin. He sold the patent for $400 (which equals $13,030 in 2021) to W R Grace and Company, which made millions in profit from it.