From Riches to Rags: The Unknown History of Safety Pin
In our deep philosophical musings of existential crisis or dealing with imposter syndrome, we fail to appreciate the daily mundanity of life and the everyday objects which surround us. Let's explore the story of one such trivial object: Safety pins!
Historical dramas have captured our imagination time and again, and we have all marvelled over the elaborate clothing worn by the characters in these shows. Has it ever crossed your mind how such an elaborate and befuddling ensemble would have been put in place? It is obvious that the costume department for the show would have made use of pins and safety pins, but this line of thought leads you to another of how people in the distant past would have made those grand outfits stay in place. Wait, if we really are chasing this line of thought, where do we start from?
Hint: When in doubt, start from the beginning. . .
From the Antiquity period, in Homer’s Odyssey, there is a mention of a gift given to Penelope (Odysseus’ wife) by one of her suitors, Antinous. The gift is that of jewelled pins given in an attempt to seduce her. He gave her “a large and lovely dress. . . [which] had twelve beautifully made pins of pure gold with which to fasten it.” In Herodotus's Histories, one comes across the mention of “long, dagger-like pins” which Athenian women used to fasten their tunic. It is in Ancient Rome where we find the precursor of modern safety pins, the Latin Fibula.
Fibula? What’s that?
A fibula (plural fibulae) is an ancient brooch. Fibulae were used to fasten clothing or, in some cases, purely for decoration. They followed the straight pin in evolution since the straight pin was less secure and more dangerous, for the point remained exposed. They are perhaps most famous as the fastener on Roman military cloaks — the sagum and paludamentum. They were used by the Greeks, Persians, Phrygians, Celts, Germans, Slavs and many other people in addition to Romans. There were three primary fibula designs — bow fibulae, plate fibulae and penannular fibulae.
The anatomy of the fibula comprises four parts: the body, the pin, the spring and the hinge. The body of the fibula can be of two types, either long and narrow, referred to as a “Bow”, or flat and wide called a “Plate”. The spring or hinge end of the body is referred to as the Head, and the end where the fibula closes is called the Foot. The pin of the fibula was either a continuation of the body or a separate piece that was attached to it. The Catch Plate is the name of the connection point which closed the fibula, holding the pin in place. The early fibula had a unilateral spring, which provided tension to the pin. Unilateral Springs wound in one direction only, replaced later by bilateral springs, which wrapped around a holding pin or axel. The early 1st Century AD saw the development of the hinge, which attached the pin to the Plate of the body. In the 3rd Century AD, the famous Crossbow Fibula design was created by replacing the hinge in the centre of a long transverse bar.
Fibulae were worn facing up, down, or to the side, depending on the culture and time period. In time, the fibula became a status symbol for the elite of society. Since a fibula was visible to the public eyes, it soon became more decorative than utilitarian. Made from expensive materials such as bronze, silver and gold, the design of the fibula became more detailed and elaborate. They emphasized class differences since only the wealthy could afford such costly ornaments. The fibula later evolved into the brooch, a decorative jewellery used to fasten men’s cloaks and adorn women’s dresses and hair. Both fibula and the brooch are historical examples of conspicuous consumption, a term coined by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, to describe the practice of displaying status and wealth by purchasing expensive, unnecessary items.
Further decorative use of fibulae is to be seen on some of the belt buckles found at Ankara, Gordion, Ephesus, and Chios. Here fibulae arcs of different types serve as clasps for the belt and demonstrate that the fibula shape itself was considered aesthetic enough to function other than as a safety pin. More fascinating use of fibulae may be observed, particularly in the Greek region, where archaeologists have recognized for some time that at many sanctuaries, fibulae played a major role as votive gifts to gods and goddesses. For instance, at the sanctuary on the island of Rhodes, about sixteen hundred fibulae were found in the votive deposit, that at Ephesus contained pieces of thin gold and silver foil cut into the form of fibulae.
The Modern Safety Pin: A Tale of Two Patents
In the Middle Ages, the design reverted to one resembling a straight pin. These were fashioned out of skewers of wood for common people or out of bone, ivory, silver, gold, or brass for those of wealth and high position. In the 15th century, pins were manufactured from drawn wire. It was in the nineteenth century that the currently used design of safety pin was invented and patented by a talented individual who had a knack for inventing nifty gadgets. This person was Walter Hunt.
Hunt was born in upstate New York in 1796. After earning a degree in masonry, he worked as a farmer in the mill town of Lowville and devised more efficient machinery for local mills. He began inventing while still a teenager and received a patent for the machine to spin flax in 1826. Hunt also invented a gong for fire engines, a forest saw and a stove to burn hard coal, as well as a knife sharpener, a streetcar bell, synthetic stone, road-sweeping machinery, bicycle improvements, ice ploughs and paper collars for shirts. He also invented a version of the lockstitch sewing machine but did not patent it as he thought the machine would ultimately put seamstresses out of work.
In 1846, another person stepped into the scene, Elias Howe, who got the patent for the sewing machine. Hunt tried unsuccessfully to get this patent under his name, but his designs were found to have several faults and flaws, and Howe was awarded the patent for the improved machine. Though it was the design of modern safety pins for which he became known most prominently. The story behind the invention is an interesting one.
In 1849, Hunt owed a friend $15. To pay for this debt, he decided to invent something. Hunt took an 8-inch length of brass wire, coiled it in the centre, and shielded the clasp at one end. He called it a “dress pin” and, within three hours, sold the rights to his invention for $400. Clasp pins existed before, but Hunt’s innovation utilized a single piece of metal, implementing a spring instead of a hinge and combining the spring with a clasp. His patent application promised there would be no danger of “bending the pin or wounding the fingers.” The patent number of this safety pin was US Patent №6281. And that, folks, is how the humble but extremely useful safety pin was invented.
A Trivial Object?
Before the mechanization of the production of safety pins, metal pins were expensive for centuries. Women were given “pin money” by their husbands to purchase pins for their dresses and gowns. Imagine this scenario in today’s India, where wearing a saree — practically a hive of safety pins hidden in plain sight — would require women to ask their husbands for heaps of pin money; too much power to give to husbands!
With the process of mechanization, safety pins were easier to produce, which eventually drove the prices down. By 1914, American factories alone were making over 1.33 billion safety pins annually at the cost of $0.007 each, a stunning example of the industrial order’s democratization of an ancient and medieval luxury product.
A Confluence of the New and the Old
For more than a century, safety pins retained their original purpose, fastening pieces of fabric and items of clothing together. But that humility was broken when the safety pin made its way to popularity during the punk rock era of the 1970s. Sharon M. Hannon, in her book Punks: A Guide to an American Subculture, writes that New York punk fashion consisted of “black straight-leg pants, black leather jackets, short spiky hair, and town T-shirts held together with safety pins.” This get-up caught on with the punk rock crowd, and safety pins became part of the punk culture, even making it into body piercing.
Despite its association with punk culture, in many other parts of the world, safety pins have found their place in traditional culture. In Ukraine, safety pins are attached to the inside of children’s clothes to ward off evil spirits. In Mexico, a safety pin placed as close as possible to a pregnant woman’s belly is thought to protect her unborn child from loss and disease. In the Philippines, a safety pin is used to pin charms or amulets on a baby’s clothing to protect against bad fortune. In sports culture, the safety pin retains its popular use to affix a race bib on a runner’s shirt. In India, taking the utility of safety pins to fasten clothing in place to a metaphorical level, the idea of safety pins has become symbolic of a sense of security, mainly for women. A Delhi-based app called My Safetipin hopes to encourage women to step out in public spaces rather than live with the fear of risking their safety by stepping outside. Founded by Dr Kalpana Viswanath in 2013, the app uses crowdsourced data to measure how safe an area is. In another instance, a #safetypin Twitter campaign suggested wearing safety pins to show support for immigrants in the U.K. experiencing racist attacks after Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. Following in the U.K.’s footsteps, wearing safety pins in the U.S. has become an act of solidarity for those subjected to hate and vitriol in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential win in the recent elections.
Hard as it may seem to believe that a seemingly simple dress item like a safety pin would have such a rich history from being a symbol of courtship and elite class status to becoming a symbol of opposition and dissent, such are the wonders of time, where the pin becomes mightier than the sword!
This article was written by Muskan Garg and edited by Atotmyr and Vagisha Bhatia.
Stay tuned as we unfold more histories!
References
- Rina Caballar- Three Millennia of Safety Pins.
- Jimmy Stamp- The Inventive Mind of Walter Hunt, Yankee Mechanical Genius
- Oscar W. Muscarella- Ancient Safety Pins: Their Function and Significance
- Randy Alfred- April 10, 1849: Safety Tech Gets to the Point, Baby
- Edward Tenner- History of Safety Pins
- Shreesha Ghosh- Delhi’s My Safetipin App is telling women which streets are unsafe to be on. Here’s how.
