The Humble Safety Pin

Few objects are as easy to overlook as the safety pin. It sits forgotten in sewing boxes, kitchen drawers and handbags, and is usually noticed only when a button falls off or a hem comes down at an awkward moment. Yet this small loop of wire has a long and surprisingly eventful history, and its basic design has hardly changed in more than a century and a half.

People have been fastening clothes with pins for thousands of years. Archaeologists have found bronze brooches from ancient Greece and Rome that work on a similar principle, with a sharp point held in a catch to stop it from slipping. These early fasteners, however, were made by hand, often decorated with precious metals, and were treated as jewellery rather than as everyday tools. Ordinary people in later centuries made do with straight pins, which were cheap but had an unfortunate tendency to prick the wearer or fall out altogether.

The modern safety pin is usually credited to an American mechanic working in the late 1840s. According to a popular account, he was in debt to a friend and twisted a piece of wire for a few hours to find something he could sell. His design included two features that are still found today: a coil at one end, which acts as a spring, and a clasp at the other, which covers the point. He sold the rights to his invention for a modest sum, and it was the manufacturer who bought them, rather than the inventor himself, who went on to earn a fortune.

Mass production transformed the pin from a curiosity into a household essential. Factories in Britain and the United States developed machines that could cut, bend and sharpen wire at great speed, so that pins were soon sold by the card for a few pennies. They became especially important for mothers, who used them to fasten cloth nappies, and manufacturers responded with larger pins whose heads were covered in plastic to make them easier to grip. Soldiers' kits during both world wars also included a supply of pins for repairing uniforms in the field.

Manufacturing methods have changed little since then. Modern pins are usually made from steel wire coated with nickel or brass to prevent rust, and the point is ground at an angle so that it slides through fabric without tearing it. Quality controllers test samples from each batch by opening and closing them hundreds of times, since a clasp that springs open could injure the wearer. Larger versions, sometimes more than ten centimetres long, are made for blankets, horse rugs and kilts, while tiny ones are sold for attaching price labels to clothes in shops.

Over time, the pin also acquired meanings that went beyond its practical use. In parts of eastern Europe, a pin hidden inside a child's clothing was traditionally believed to offer protection against bad luck. In the 1970s, young musicians and their fans in London wore pins through torn jackets, and occasionally through their ears, as a deliberate challenge to conventional fashion. More recently, pins worn on the lapel have been used to signal support for causes or to show solidarity with people who feel unwelcome, although some critics argue that such gestures cost the wearer very little.

Designers continue to find new uses for this simple object. A textile researcher named Priya Lomas, who studies how clothes are repaired at home, points out that many people now prefer to mend garments rather than replace them, and that the safety pin is often the first tool they reach for. Some fashion houses have even produced pins made from gold, selling them at prices that would have astonished the original inventor. Lomas, though, believes the pin's real value lies in its accessibility: it needs no skill, no electricity and no special equipment, and it can be used by a child as easily as by an adult.

Perhaps the safety pin's greatest achievement is that it has survived almost unchanged while countless other inventions have disappeared. Zips, poppers and adhesive strips have all taken over some of its functions, but none has replaced it entirely, and pins are still sold in their millions in supermarkets, chemists and corner shops. As Lomas puts it, an object that solves a common problem cheaply and reliably rarely needs to be improved, and the people who use it every day are seldom aware of how clever it is.