the.com/safety pin
A spring and a shield, invented to stop you stabbing yourself while fixing everything else.
means A pin bent into a clasp with a coiled spring at one end and a guarded clasp at the other, so the sharp point locks safely out of reach of your fingers (or the baby).
from Pins go back to antiquity, but the safety pin as we know it was patented in the 1840s by Walter Hunt, an American inventor who — the well-documented story goes — twisted a length of wire into the spring-and-clasp design in a few hours to pay off a small debt, then sold the patent outright for a few hundred dollars, missing out on the fortune it went on to make for others.
- patented
- 1849, by Walter Hunt, in three hours
- debt deal
- he sold rights for 400 dollars flat
- ancient roots
- bronze fibulae did the same job millennia earlier
- protest symbol
- worn post-Brexit as a sign of solidarity