Weekly national intelligencer., 1851-05-03
WHAT BECOMES OF ALL THE PINS

Every body uses pns-men women, and children Every
body buys them. Every body bends them, breaks them
knocks of their heads, and loses hem They into
every operation, from the drawing the scuery Go
where you will if you look sharp, you may calculate with
certainty picking up pnn the Streets in the cabs,
the door steps and mats in halls and drawing stick
in curtains and sofas and paperhangngs, in counting
and lawyers Offices keeping together old receipts and
bills, and fragments Of papers, ladies' needlework shop
Keepers parcels In books bags, baskets luggage-they
to be found every where let them get there how they may
by accident design Their ubiquiy is astounding and
their manufacture, being in proportion it, be
thing prodgious. There article of perpetual with
which familiar and Of this familiarity springs
indifference for there is article about whose final destna
ton we are profoundly ignorant. We know well enough
the end OF things (not half useful to u.s. that
the Of time or that are liable be smashed cracked
Clipped pu. out of orde otherwise rendered unavailable
for further services but Of tie fate of this little article
universal in its application, indispensable in its utility,
know nothing whatever. Nobody thinks of asking,
WHAT BEcoMEs OF THE PINs For our own part, we
should be very glad to get that question: and
should be very much obliged to any person who furnish
with it. :.# .t.
The question by no mean, an idle one If we could get
at the statistics Of pins should have tremendous
laons The loss in pins strayed stolen, and msd, is
past all calculation. Millions of billions Of pins must vanish
no woman alive can tell how wherein the Of
year. Of the actual number fabricated, pointed, headed,
and prepared for sale from years end another e
member they to be found in every house, large small
within the pale of civilization should be afraid venture
vncble tendency lose themselves and
careessness in losing hem spprehend that could such
return be obtained would present alarming result Think
OF millions OF billions Of pins being Of perpetual dis
appearance And this has been going for centuries and
centuries, and will continue go probably the worlds
end grave matter to contemplate, my masters. A pin,
in its single integrity is tAe atomic in comparison with
other things that lost and found sgan But reflect
for moment upon pins in the aggregate. The grand
total of human life made up of fess large bodies are
composed Of minute particles.
Years made up Of months, months Of weeks weeks Of
days, days of hours, hours of minutes minutes of seconds
and, coming down to the seconds and calling in the multi
plicaon table to enlghen u.s. shsll find that there are
considerably upward Of hirtyone million OF them in year.
Try similar experiment with the pins Assume any given
quantity Of loss in any given ime and calculate what it viii
cycle of centuries. Most people afraid Of
locking the future and would not thsy could acquire
knowledge OF the destiny that lies before them Pause
therefore, before you embark in this fearful calculation for
the chances largely n favor OF your arriving this ha
rowing conclusion, that by the force of accumulation
and the inevitable pressure Of quantity the great globe
self must at very ds,an, period, become vast shapelsss
mass of pins
A. yet we have no signs or tokens Of this impending
ophe, and entirely in the dark about the process that is
nsidousy conducting and hence ask, in solemn
cents WHAr BECOMES OF THE PIss' Where do they go
to How do they get there What the attractive and
pusve forces which they subject after they drop from
US What the laws that govern their wandengs' Do
they dissolve and voaiz. and back again into the air.
that breathing pins withou. knowing IL Do they
melt into the EARTH and go the of vegetables. that
every day Of lives uncon.ciously dining them
The inquiry BEETLES ell scholarship and forced to put
up with the obscure satisfaction which Hamlet applies 10 the
world Of apparions that there pins in unknown
places and unsuspected shapes upon the earth than deamt
of in our rphiiosophy.-lSELEcTED.l
correspondent who read the foregoing a'tcein Daily
paper favors US with the following:
e.. WAsHIseToS, ArRrL 80, 1851
Me.srs. EpIToRs In your valued pspe of this morning
you publish selected article headed, What becomes all
tie Pns?" After stating the macy es to which these very
necessary articles are applied, it says the loss Of pins
ssyed stolen, and msaid, past all calculation" MI
lions of Of pins must vansh-n woman alive
| can tell how o where'-'.in the course Of year"
think, srs, the author Of that article thought little Of
what he saying, when he sad that "miions of Bill
LOSS must vanish "n the Of year Many pins
undoubtedly, vanish every year bu, any Mathematician will
demonstrate to US that single billion has yet been
manu'acured billion, according TO Noah Webster, is
mi,on OF milions-a number east, say, the human
mnd oa not the capacity to comprehend it. mandatory
making one hundred pins per minute, and kept constant
OPERATION would only make ffytwo millions five hundred
and ninety Thousand per annum and would require very
near TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS the ratio and with
out single moments cessation, to make that number called
billion. EUCLID