REPUBLICAN

October 26, 188.

 

NEEDLES AND PINS

History of Their Manufacture in England and the United States

 

            Needles were no doubt contemporaneous with the very beginnings of civilization, as they were necessary for the fashioning of even the rudest skin garments.  In their earliest form they were probably only strong thorns or splinters of wood, bone or stone, for puncturing holes through which to draw the thread.  The next step was to make an eye in the splinter, that it might carry the thread at the same time that it pierced the skin; and some very finely finished and polished needles made of splints of bone have been found in prehistoric remains.  Bronzo needles have been found in Egyptian tombs that must have been made several thousand years before the Christian era,, and similar implements are known to have been in use by the Chinese, Hindoos, Chaldeans, Assyrians and other ancient nations at very early periods in their history.  The steel needle is believed to have been fist made in Spain.  It is known that these needles were manufactured at several places in Europe as early as the fourteenth century.  In the reign of Queen Elizabeth a German came to England and taught the art of making fine Spanish needles, but for many years he art was kept as the secret of a few persons.  Great improvements were made in this manufacture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and now the English needles largely supply the world.  They are principally made at Redditch, near Birmingham, and neighboring villages, where over ten thousand persons are employed in the work.  There are some needles of good quality made in the United States, but they are of but little importance compared to the imported needles.  Pins are also of very ancient manufacture.  They were first made of ivory, bone or wood splints, but bronze pins are found in Egyptian tombs, and also those of silver and gold.  The ancient Romans had metal pins also, and so had other nations.  They were made with ornamented heads, and from one to eight inches long.  The small pin, as we know it, was a more modern invention.  In England the manufacture of pins was established about eh middle of the thirteenth century, for in 1483 we find a statute was passed prohibiting the importation of foreign pins in the interest of home manufactures.  Brass pins were brought from France in 1540, and were said to have been first used by Catherine Howard, Queen of Henry VIII.  In Gloucester the business of pin-making was begun in 1626, and soon became of great importance.  It was established in London in 1636, and later in Birmingham, which became the chief seat of this and other manufacturing operations. In the United States no effort was made at pin-making until the war of 1812, when the interruption of commerce had raised the price of these useful little articles to one dollar a paper.  At the old State prison, in what was then called Greenwich village – now a part of New York City – the first attempts in pin-making were made in Bellevue Almshouse in 1820, but both trials were given up as failures.  Meanwhile, one Lemuel W. Wright, of Massachusetts, had invented some machinery to cheapen and improve pin manufacture.  Not finding a sufficient opening for his plan in this country, he took his machinery to London and had it patented there in 1824.  The first attempts with these machines did not succeed, but by means of improvements success was achieved, and solid-headed pins were put on the market about 1833.  In 1832 machines made by John I. Howe, of New York, were patented in the United States. These were the first self-acting machines that really succeeded.  At first they made the wire head, then the solid head. The Howe Pin Company was established at Birmingham, Conn. in 1838.  Another large factory was established at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., about the same time, and this was finally consolidated with a pin company of Waterbury, Mass., which still continues to carry on the manufacture on an enormous scale.                                                                          - Chicago Inter Ocean