PIN (AS. pinn, from ML. pinna, pin, nail, peak, Lat. pima, prima. feather, wing. lin. pen). Probably the pin in its most primitive form of a spike, thorn. or fish-bone was employed long before the earliest needle :111.1 thread, a- a of fastening a garment together. (See NEEDLE.) Among the remains of the lake dwellers of Cen tral Europe have been found a great number of pins. some of bone. others of bronze. Many of these are quite elaborate, with ornamental heads. while others are rudely fashioned. Some have double stem- and a few- have been found in form exactly like the modern safety pin. Example, of artistically wrought pins are found a Mt InU Egyp tian as well as Greek Ancient Roman bronze pins and bone hair-pins. with ornamental heads. have been found at Pompeii. The 11omans also made very elaborate the prototype of the modern brooch. That simple pins, consisting of beads and shank with a sharpened point. were much used and highly esteemed by the nations of antiquity is proved by the frequent allusions to them in proverbs and other literature. As a requisite of the toilet, pins of iron wire were made in England during fl e fifteenth century: wire pins were introdmed from Frame in 1540 by Catharine Howard. Queen of Ht my VIII. The invention of the process of Ira winz wire was the foundation of modern pin manufacture, and for years the industry w confined to the two count Iles, France and Germany. where this process was invented. 'Brass wire pins were first made in England in l•-;3ti. e industry was most sueeessful and spread rapidly, so that with in ten years it was well established at Gloucester shire. Bristol. BirmiwTham. and London, and the pin-makers of the last-named city had formed a corporation.
At first pins were made by filing a proper length of wire to a roil I and then twisting piece of tine wire around the other extremity. The complete proves, imolved thirteen or four teen operations, requiring the labor of as many difr•rcnt ja rsuns. Most 111 these processes were performed by I and tools as distinguished from automat ie machinery. and in many cases a whole pin was made at a time. Toward the (-lost' of the eighteenth century various inventors were devising machines for shortening this complicated process. In 1797 a solid-headed pin was made by Timothy Harris, of Englaml. The blanks were placed tut a too-part mold in which prints at the proper place represented the pin-head. Into this mold an alloy of had and aMimony was poured, which solidified and formed a solid head to the pin. improvements followed. the most im portant of which was the machine invented by Lemuel Wellman Wright, of the United States. in 1824. This did little more than make solid
heads to the pins, by a process in principle like that used for nail-making—viz.. by driving a portion of the pin it into a countersunk hole. The action, however, was automatic, and con sisted in an arrangement by which the wire was seized in two small grooved cheeks. \Viten both cheeks are placed face to face, the wire is tightly in the groove with a small portion pro jecting, a small ram or hammer connected with the machine strikes on the projecting portion described, and compresses it into a smaIl cup shaped depression, and thus the head is formed. In 1831 a machine for making perfect solid headed pins. like those now in use, was invented by .1ohn Ireland llowe, a physician in Bellevue Hospital, New York lily. The following year a company was organized to make pins after his patents, which, six years later, moved to Derby, Conn.
The modern pin-making machine, without the aid of hands, completes the pin in all respects except the coloring and polishing. First. a reel of wire as it comes front the wire-drawer is placed in the rear of the machine, and the end of the wire is taken hold of by a pair of nippers, which pull it over a straightening-board, and pass it on completely straightened. until it is seized by two eln•eks, when a cutter descends and cuts it ofT, leaving the projecting part for the head: on the withdrawal of the cutter, the hammer flies forward, and makes the head as before described: the checks Open and the pins drop on to a sloping nwtal plate, finely grooved, down whieh they slip with the heads upward, until the end which is to be pointed comes in contact with a cylindrical roller with a grinding surface, which soon grinds points upon them, by the operation of two or three ingenious arrange ments: the first is. that the grooved surface of the plate by which the pins descend terminates a little above the grinding roller, then a slight depression is given to the sloping plate, and also to the roller, so that one end is an inch or two lower than the other; therefore as the pin de scends the groove, and is thus brought doNtn the inclined plate, until it lies on the smooth part, where it is highest, and its end in contact with the grinding roller which is revolving, the pin itself is compelled by the friction of the roller to turn rotund, and gradually descends from the upper to the lower part of the inclined plate. and then falls into a box placed to receive it. These operations are performed so rapidly that they can scarcely be perceived by the eye, and the pins, hcautifully pointed, fall into the box in-a stream. They are then yellowed, tinned. and prepared fio papering.