Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1879-10-16
POINTS ABOUT PINS.

The first automatic pin machine dates from
1924, when an American (they are nearly
always Americans who do these things
named Wright, exhibited in London his ma.
chine, which during the revolution Of single
wheel, produced a perfect pin. Of course, IN
the long interval between 1924 and 1879,
many improvements have been made on this
machinery, and the one now in use is that of
Messrs. Taylor, which is only twenty.four
inches wide, thirty inches long and eighteen
inches high-a veritable Liliputian giant. A
pin, divested of all sentiment, is piece OF
polished brass wire, timed over, with point
at one end and head at the other, and is
produced thus: The brass wire is fed on to
the machine by q reel, and the first operation
is to give it head, which is done by the wire
being forced into recess, and there meeting
a steel punch and die. The head on, the
wire is suddenly nipped in the middle, accord
ing to the proposed length Of the embryo pin,
and slides down grooved incline into q
tray with slit in the bottom. Through this
slit the headed pin wire is bound to 60 but,
as the head prevents its entirely dropping
through, it is left dangling (though for an in
6nitesimal period only) over revolving rol-
ler of steel, garnished with number of teeth
like files. Before the pin has had time to
consider its situation, the end touching the
roller is pointed, smoothed and polished, and, !,
at the same moment that the operation is
finished, it is pushed through the slit by its
successor, following in the same track, and
drops into tray clean as the new pin that it is.
The subsequent processes are comparatively
slight ones. They are frightened by boiling
in weak beer, so as to thoroughly purify the
surface, and then exposed to solution OF
grain tin, by which they acquire coating
Of that metal, and finally shaken in a barrel
with bran or saw dust, which makes them
pretty and bright. Perhaps not the least
curious part of the performance is represented
in the papering- which formerly cost both
time and money when done by hand. Twelve
sheets of paper had to be folded, in each
sheet of which there were twenty-four double
folds, and into these were stuck carefully
and laboriously IA rows Of pins, with thirty.
nine in each row, in all, 5,5l6. But by the
action of very simple piece OF machinery,
the paper, with the makers name ready print
ed on it and actually crimped, and the pins
SUCK lntO IL III ToWs, 10 uouo WuCn AoecoA 'InesA
these lines can be written. Perhaps the lady
readers of this article and pin consumers, as
all women are, will look with more respect on
these unconsidered triAes when they think of
the extraordinary ingenuity that has been Law
ished upon them, and that, small as they are,
nearly quarter million pounds sterling are
annually spent upon them by purchasers. Pins,
like needles, have many other differences be-
sides those of thickness and length. Mourn
ing pins are not made of brass at all, but Of
iron wire, and are "blued" by heating them
in muf1e. Then there are corker pins OF
three and half inches in length, hair pins,
safety pins for dresses and shawls, not to
speak Of chronological pins, without which
the collector of insects is utterly lost-ES-
change.