The credit of inventing nail-making ma chinery appears to belong to the United States, a patent having been granted in 1786 to Ezekiel Reed, of Bridgewater, Mass., for a "cut-nail* machine. About the beginning of the 19th century nail-making machines had been gener ally introduced in England, hut the first English patent was granted to John Clifford in 1790. In making cut nails strips of metal of a breadth and thickness corresponding to the length and thickness of the required nail and about a foot in length are heated to a black heat and fed into the machine end first. A slicer cuts off the nail-blank, which in falling is clutched at the neck and held until a moving die strikes its upper end and forms the head; it is then liber ated and passes out into the trough. In small nails the taper of the shanks and points is ob tained by cutting the nail-blanks alternately, the metal strip (of uniform thickness) being turned over after each cut so that the points and heads are taken from the opposite sides of the blank; while in the larger nails the metal strip is rolled so that its cross-section corresponds to the re quired taper. These machines turn out nails at a rate of 10 to 1,000 per minute, according to the size of the nails. Cast nails are pro duced by the ordinary process of molding in sand. They are relatively brittle, but are cheap, and are used for rough purposes, such as lath ing and in the manufacture of stout boots and shoes. Wire nails were first made in France, hence sometimes called ((French nails.° They were used in the woodworlcing trades and up to 1850 were made by hand. The wire was cut into the required lengths; a wire-blank was pinched in a vise, with a small portion project ing, which was flattened into a head by a few blows of the hammer. Subsequently machines were invented into which the wire was fed and the cutting, heading and pointing were formed automatically.
In the United States William Hersel, of New York, produced the first hand-made wire nails in 1850. Shortly afterward French ma
chines were imported, but they were soon super seded by those of American make, which were awarded medals over those of French and Ger man manufacturers at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876. The new industry, however, was of slow growth. Up to 1885 there were about 25 firms engaged in it, but since then these nails have been widely adopted in the manufacturing trades. The United States Census of Manu factures for 1914 reported 64 establishments devoted exclusively to the manufacture of nails, tacks and spikes. The factories employed a total of 2,644 wage-earners to whom was paid annually in wages the sum of $1,507,689. The aggregate capital invested was $7,883,371. The value of the year's production was $7,198,600, of which $3,604,281 had been added by manufac ture. In addition to this product, however, the steel rolling mills of the country made nails to the value of $1,469,780 and railroad spikes to the value of $4,201,388; brass and bronze fac tories made brass nails to the value of $40,262, the wire mills made wire nails to the value of $23,368,633; and other metal working establishments made a value of $321,256. The aggregate output of these con cerns not classed as nail-makers is thus shown to be $29,401,319 —more than four times the output of the recognized nail industry. With the exception of horseshoe nails, which to a considerable extent continue to be made by hand, from fine grades of wrought iron, all nails are now made of mild steel by machines. In the United States the production is in ex cess of the consumption and American wire nails, especially, have been exported to Euro pean and other countries in increasing quan tities for several years. The money value of the export of 1891 was but $420,697, while that of recent years has exceeded $5,000,000 annually. Consult Smith, B., 'Wire: Its Manufacture and Uses' (New York 1891); Swank, J. M.,