How a small debt led to the invention of the safety pin
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
You'd be forgiven for thinking that when it comes to solving problems, the more resources you have, the easier the solutions will come.
However, this isn’t always the case.
There are plenty of examples of inventive ideas coming about from a lack of means.
This was undoubtedly true for Walter Hunt, born in Martinsburg in upstate New York in 1796.
After school, he trained as a mechanical engineer but decided to try his hand at being an inventor.
His first breakthrough design came in the shape of a new form of typewriter.
Unfortunately, Walter overlooked patenting his invention at the time.
This became a cause of great frustration when he found himself in debt to a friend a few years later.
Desperate to solve his money troubles, he experimented feverishly with the scrap materials in his workshop.
One day, he was playing around with some metal wire, bending it into various shapes.
After a while, he realised by twisting the wire back on itself, he could create a type of spring.
With a further bit of shaping, the opposite ends of the metal wire could be ‘fastened’ together.
And with that, the ‘safety pin’ was born.
Not wishing to make the same mistake again, Hunt sold the patent to another company for $400.
He used the money to pay off the $15 debt and kept the remaining amount.
The talented inventor should have realised that the company he sold it to would make many millions from his invention.
Hunt didn’t seem to be good at learning from past experiences and repeated the same mistake with many other inventions he patented.
He never became wealthy and died at the age of 62. He is buried in Brooklyn, New York.
Nevertheless, his story is an excellent example of how a lot can be achieved with a little, especially when the pressure is on.
After all, constraints breed creativity.
