Pin, a bit of wire, sharp at one end and headed at the other, used chiefly in the toilet for temporarily securing portions of the dress, and generally by seamstresses and tailors for fastening their work together. The need of little utensils of this sort has been met from ancient times by various devices. The pins mentioned in the Bible for fastening the hangings round the court of the temple were of metal. The Roman pins were usually of bronze, with variously shaped, ornamented heads; they were from one to eight inches long, and were sometimes made of ivory, bone, or wood. In the Egyptian tombs they are found much more elaborate and costly than the pins of the present time. They are usually of bronze, but some are of silver and gold. A collection of 25 bronze pins from Thebes is in the museum of the Louvre, and a number are in the Abbott collection in New York. They vary in length up to seven or eight inches, and are furnished sometimes with large gold heads, and sometimes with a band of gold around the upper end, those of the latter kind having probably been used for securing the hair.

The ancient Mexicans found in the thorns of the agave convenient substitutes for metallic pins; and even the English, up to the middle of the 16th century, made use of rude skewers of wood, though they also made others of gold, silver, and brass to serve as pins. To that time they had depended upon the manufacturers on the continent for their supplies of the better sorts of pins, and this importation appears •to have been established previous to 1483, when it was interrupted by a prohibitory statute. In 1543 an act of parliament provided "that no person shall put to sale any pins but only such as be double-headed and have the head soldered fast to the shank of the pin, well smoothed, the shank well shaven, the point well and roundly filed, canted, and sharpened." Three years later the manufacture was so much improved that the statute was of no importance. In Gloucester the business of pin making was introduced in 1626, and soon proved so prosperous that it gave employment to 1,500 persons. It was established in London in 1636, and afterward in Birmingham, which became the chief seat of this and similar manufacturing operations.

In the United States the manufacture was first undertaken soon after the war of 1812, when in consequence of the interruption to commerce the value of a paper of pins was not less than $1, and these were of very inferior quality to those now worth only six cents a paper. The first attempt was made by some Englishmen at the old state prison, in what was then called Greenwich village, now a part of New York city. The enterprise was soon abandoned, and was again undertaken with the same tools in 1820 at the Bellevue almshouse, but again without success. In Massachusetts during the war a new machine was invented for facilitating the process, but little or nothing was done in the manufacture. In 1824 Lemuel W. Wright of Massachusetts patented in England, and introduced in a factory at Lambeth, London, some important machines of his invention, the first ever contrived for making solid-headed pins. But the company failed before these pins were introduced into the market, and the machinery was transferred to Stroud in Gloucestershire, where the manufacture was conducted by D. F. Taylor and co., and the first solid-headed pins were sold by this firm in London about the year 1833. In 1832 the new machines of John I. Howe of New York were patented in the United States. These were for making the pins with wire or " spun heads " like those imported from Europe, and were no doubt the first self-acting machines, in which the pin was entirely completed by one process, that proved successful.

In 1836 they were put in operation by the Howe manufacturing company in New York. Their operations were transferred to Birmingham, Conn., in 1838, and soon included the new process of making pins with solid heads patented by Mr. Howe in 1840. Another factory was established in 1838 at Poughkeepsie by Slocum, Gellson, and co., making use of processes invented by Samuel Slocum for producing the solid-head pin; but their interests were finally transferred to the " American Pin Company," at Waterbury, Conn., where the business has long been successfully carried on in connection with the manufacture of hooks and eyes. - By the old methods of manufacture, which varied considerably at different times, the distinct processes usually numbered 14, commencing with straightening the wire, which had already been thoroughly cleaned, drawn down through a plate to the required size, and wound on a bobbin. The straightening was effected by drawing the wire quickly through the spaces between six or seven upright pins fixed in a table in a slightly waving line, adapted to the thickness of the wire. The wire was thus run out in lengths of 30 ft., which were cut off, and these were reduced to shorter lengths adapted for three or four or six pins.

Pointing was done by grinding the ends upon stones or steel cylinders, called mills, 30 or 40 of the pin wires being held together in the hands and made to rotate as their ends were applied to the grinding surfaces. They were then cut into the right lengths, and the bits not pointed were returned to the pointer. The pin heads, made of a finer wire, were prepared by winding them by a lathe into a spiral round other wires. Three turns of the spiral being cut off furnished the head for one pin. The heads were annealed by being brought to a red heat, and then shaped by the blow of a hammer. Each one being taken up on a pin wire, and this introduced point downward in a hole in the centre of a die, a blow from a block hammer worked by a treadle secured the head to the pin. In Wright's machine for solid-headed pins there is a main shaft which moves a number of slides, levers, and wheels. A slider advances a pair of pincers which draws the wire, equal in length to a pin, from a reel, at every revolution of the shaft. The upper jaw of a die cuts off the wire and also opens a carrier which takes it to the pointing apparatus, where it is received by a revolving holder and subjected to the action of a rapidly revolving file wheel. A second carrier takes it to a finer file wheel for finishing.

A third carrier takes the pin to the first heading die, where a steel punch forces one end into a recess and partially forms the head. A fourth carrier takes the pin to a second die, where the heading is completed. A forked lever then draws it from the die and drops it, the work of the machine being done. The pins are afterward whitened, polished, sorted, and stuck into papers. The whitening is done by first polishing in rotating barrels with sawdust, then placing them in kettles between perforated plates of tin in alternate layers, and boiling them in very dilute nitric acid for about three hours. This covers them with a thin coating of tin, when they are again rolled in a barrel with hot sawdust to smooth and polish them. Some of the pins are imperfect from roughness, and these are separated by a series of belts having an oscillating motion which discharges the smooth pins the fastest. They are sorted by means of a horizontally revolving wheel having different sets of steel fingers, each adapted to particular lengths of the pins. - Among the most important improvements in the manufacture are the machines for sticking the pius in papers.

Until their introduction the pins were taken by the families living in the neighborhood, and fixed in the papers by the women and children at their houses. This was an inconvenient and wasteful method, and not easily carried out upon a large scale. The first improvement over the old English " hand bar " was the invention of Samuel Slocum, and consisted in a hand machine patented in 1840, and used at Poughkeepsie. Various improvements were made upon this by different inventors, and for 16 years or more the machine was in operation in the factory at Waterbury, and also at Birmingham, Conn. It is now superseded at both places by an improvement on a patent granted to Thaddeus Fowler of Connecticut. The pins are fed into a hollow cylinder which revolves on rollers, and are taken up in the compartments into which this cylinder is divided by means of longitudinal ribs extending along its inner surface. From these they drop upon an inclined plate, and sliding down this are caught in the links of an endless chain which passes along the lower edge of the plate. Each link is notched for as many pins as make a row, and each notch receives its pin hanging in it by the head. The whole row is then left together in the paper, when the link is carried forward to the proper position.

The only attention the machine requires is to supply it with paper and pins. - Pins are also now made of iron and steel wire. To protect the metal from rusting it is lubricated with oil as it passes the last time from the draw plate. The manufacture is then conducted as with pins of brass wire. A factory in Connecticut produces them. Black pins for use with black dresses are prepared by japanning the common brass pins.