Every Day Is Special: pins

Showing posts with label pins. Show all posts

September 10 – Swap Ideas Day

Posted on September 10, 2014

Today is the day we are urged to swap ideas.

I think this is a great day to start a Pinterest account!

That's because it's fun to swap ideas with other people using the ease of “Pinning” and the visual appeal of the picture links to other people's ideas.

For example, if you are interested in ideas for an Ancient Egypt-themed birthday party, just Google “Ancient Egypt party Pinterest, and voila! I found a whole page full of Pinterest boards with that very topic! Here is one of my favorites.

Maybe you are on the prowl for Halloween costume ideas, ways to decorate your bedroom, info on fractals, or chemistry experiments for kids. Trust me, there are Pinterest boards on almost every topic you can think of!

Start one or more Pinterest board of your own by pinning the ideas you like and want to keep for future reference.

You might also want to start a Pinterest board on a topic you are an expert about. That's the beauty of swapping – it's GIVE and TAKE, take and give.

Also on this date:

Line Dance Week

St. George's Caye Day in Belize

Gibraltar's National Day

Archeologist Robert Koldeway's birthday

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

September holidays
September birthdays
Historical anniversaries in September

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

June 22 – Pin-Making Machine Patented

Posted on June 22, 2014

Before this date in 1832, Americans bought pins made by hand in 18 separate steps.

What happened on this date in 1832? An American doctor named John Howe patented a machine that quickly manufactured pins in just one step!

More patents followed – one by Howe improving his pin-making machine, and several by his workers for machines that stacked pins or packaged them.

A straight pin is a piece of iron wire with a larger “head” on one end (to help people use it and to hold it in place) and a sharp point on the other end. Pins are most commonly used to hold pieces of fabric together but are sometimes used to attach papers as well.

The pin itself is ancient. Even prehistoric people made and used pins – although they tended to be made from thorns or bone or ivory. Ancient peoples also crafted pins out of bronze, silver, gold, and brass; these ancient pins often had highly decorative heads.

The modern iron straight pin was used as least as early as the 1400s, in France, and there are mentions of pins or “papers of pins” as part of a tailor's equipment from many areas of Europe at that time.

By the 1700s, pin-making was “industrialized” – which means that the labor of making a pin was divided among many people. Each person could become an expert at one step of the pin-making process, and could handle just one piece of equipment – making the process go faster. Adam Smith even used a pin factory as an example of the efficiency of the division of labor.

With this division of labor, a factory could churn out 5,000 pins a day.

With Howe's machine, a factory could churn out 70,000 pins a day! That's 14 times as many!

But the packaging step was still slow until 1843, when Howe and his workers developed a machine to crimp paper and insert the pins in the paper.

Do some pin art!

You could use one of those cool pin-frame toys to make interesting images. And you should definitely check out this giant pin-art installation!