Pin Sizes
The pins are put into a vibrating hopper, which slopes slightly towards the sticking machine. The conductor from the hopper to the machine is made of two strips of steel, down which the pins, held by their heads, slide. They are taken from the conductor by a screw thread and fed to the carrier, which takes thirty pins at a time and places them in front of a set of thirty punches. They are then forced along thirty grooves in the steel clamps, which crimp the paper, and on through the crimp. Thus a whole row of pins is stuck at once. The paper is now advanced the proper distance, and another row is stuck. When the center of the paper is reached, after six rows have been stuck, the machine automatically spaces the paper so as to skip the space used for the brand name. Then six more rows are stuck, and the operator removes the completed paper and inserts another without stopping the machine. These papers are inspected to make certain that no poorly made pins have gotten by the former inspection, are rolled and packed, usually in boxes of twelve papers each.
Pins today are made in many sizes from the 31⁄2-inch stout blanket pins down to the fine, slender, bronze pins used by entomologists, 4,500 of which pins make an ounce. Toilet pins are usually made in six sizes as shown in the illustrations. Besides the common or toilet pins, there are today numerous special bank and desk pins which are made to meet special requirements.
Pin production in the United States has reached a high stage of development. The number of pins made in 1914 reached the tremendous total of 25,000,000,000. These figures are almost too great for comprehension. If all the pin wire used for these 25,000,000,000 pins were in one piece it would go around the earth fifteen times. Safety pins, hooks and eyes, and hairpins, are generally made by pin concerns. Each of these different articles require very ingenious machines. Many of them are almost human in their operation.
The popular name of the prominence seen in the front of the throat in a man is called the “Adam’s apple” because of the story in the Old Testament, telling of the eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge by Adam, a piece being supposed to have lodged in his throat where the bulge appears.