Walter Hunt (inventor)

Walter Hunt
Walter Hunt
Born	(1796-07-29)July 29, 1796 Martinsburg, New York
Died	June 8, 1859(1859-06-08) (aged 62)
Nationality	United States
Known for	fountain pen sewing machine safety pin flax streetcar bell hard-coal-burning stove street sweeping machinery, ice plough

Walter Hunt (July 29, 1796 – June 8, 1859) was an American engineering technician with mechanical ability. Through the course of his work he became renowned for being a prolific inventor, notably of the lockstitch sewing machine, safety pin, a forerunner of the Winchester repeating rifle, a successful flax spinner, knife sharpener, streetcar bell, hard-coal-burning stove, artificial stone, street sweeping machinery, and the ice plough. Hunt did not realize the significance of many of these devices when he invented them; today, many are widely used products. He thought little of the safety pin, selling the patent for $400 to a company to pay a man to whom he owed $15. He failed to apply for a patent on his sewing machine initially because he worried it would establish unemployment among the occupation of seamstresses.

Early life

Walter Hunt was born in the town of Martinsburg, in Lewis County, New York. He was the first born child to thirteen children born to Sherman Hunt and Rachel Hunt.

Education

Hunt got his childhood education in a one-room schoolhouse. He went on to earn a degree in masonry in 1817 and graduated from college at the age of 21.

Mid life

Hunt worked as a farmer while a teenager in the Lewis County milling community of Lowville, New York. A textile mill was in the small town and was the basic economy for the people of the area. Most of Hunt's friends and family members were spinners of wool and cotton as their occupation. When the mill did good business then the people of the community benefited, however when the mill business was down it impaired the people financially. Hunt had a mechanical engineering ability and would put that to use to benefit the community when it was called for. One time in 1816 his expertise in mechanics was applied to a flax spinner and enabled the flax mill owner and a community member to obtain a patent on a spinning and roping machine in 1823.

Again in 1826 when the mill owner threatened to cut his employees' wages because the cost of flax had fallen, Hunt convinced him that his poor profits were the result of inefficient mill operations and not the fault of the workers. Hunt suggested that they build a better flax spinner machine. He created the new machine a few months later and patented it on June 22, 1826. Hunt went to New York City after receiving the patent to raise the capital needed to manufacture the new mechanism. This touring was the first time in his life he had gone to such a large city. There he sold the patent outright instead of getting money to mass-produce it. This mode of operation became Hunt's style of doing business in the future.

Hunt witnessed an accident during his first day in New York City where a carriage ran over a little girl. He was troubled by the incident and the fact that this was a common occurrence in the city. When he got back home he decided to see if there was a way to prevent such accidents from happening. Carriage drivers had horns to blow to warn pedestrians that they were coming down the street, however they rarely used them during an emergency. The driver needed to keep both hands on the reins to keep the horses under control and to prevent run-away instances. Those events motivated Hunt to devise a metal gong with a hammer that could be operated by foot without letting go of the horse reins. He patented his new innovation on July 30, 1827.</ref> He then decided to go back to the city to sell his new concept and moved his family with him there. He sold his house and personal possessions in Lowville and relocated his family to New York City. After much promotion to many prospects Hunt was able to sell his foot operated coach alarm mechanism idea. As was his developed style of doing business he sold his patent outright and did not profit from any further sales of the product after it was mass-produced. Hunt also in 1827, while earning a living in the real estate field, invented and developed out fire engines, police stations, an improvement on a coal-burning stove, a knife sharpener gadget, and a restaurant steam table apparatus.

Inventions

Safety pin drawing of Hunt's patent #6281

Hunt became renowned for being a prolific inventor. Notable were the present-day lockstitch sewing machine, safety pin, a forerunner of the Winchester repeating rifle, a successful flax spinner, knife sharpener, streetcar bell, hard-coal-burning stove, artificial stone, street sweeping machinery, mail sorting machinery, velocipedes, and ice ploughs. He also made improvements to guns, ice-breaking wooden hull boats, paraffin oil candles, velocipedes, machines for making rivets and nails, street sweeper machines, cylindro-conoidal bullets, self-closing inkwells, and fountain pens. He even invented the Antipodean Performers-suction shoes used by circus performers to walk up solid walls and across high ceilings.

He did not realize the significance of many of his inventions when he produced them. In the twentieth century many of his devices were widely used everyday common products.

Safety pin

Hunt thought little of the safety pin, his best-known invention. He sold the patent for $400 (equivalent to $14,650 in 2023) to W R Grace and Company, to pay a draftsman he owed $15 to (equivalent to $550 in 2023). J.R. Chapin pressured Hunt to pay off what was due to him for the drafting work he had done on previous inventions that needed patent drawings for application submissions.

He devised the safety pin ("C") by experimenting with a spool of high tension wire for a few hours on a day in 1849. His invention was an improvement on the current way clothing items were attached together before because of a protective clasp ("D") at the end and a coiled wire design {"B") with a spring tension on the pointed end leg ("A") to keep it in the protective clasp even if the pin device was moved around. The basic design is the same in the twentieth century as when Hunt innovated the device in the nineteenth century and is manufactured inexpensively. W R Grace and Company made millions of dollars profit off the product.

Hunt's sewing machine patent model constructed prior to June 27, 1854.

Sewing machine

He developed the first modern feasible operating sewing machine sometime between the years 1832 and 1834 at his Amos Street shop in New York. He never patented the mechanical device he created that used a lockstitch for sewing. It had a characteristic of an eye-pointed needle and used two threads whereby one thread passed through a twisted loop in the other thread and then both interlocked. The uniqueness of this was that it was the initial time an engineer or technician inventor had not imitated a stitch done by hand. He innovated a technique for sewing which was revolutionary and completed his working model before he showed it to anyone.

Hunt sold the rights to a businessman that never manufactured it to sell nor patented it. Hunt did not seek a patent for his sewing machine at first because he worried it would create unemployment with seamstresses. The history record shows that his daughter advised him against marketing his sewing apparatus. This ultimately led to a court case in 1854 when the lockstitch sewing machine concept was applied for by Elias Howe in a patent application. Hunt submitted his initial application for his sewing machine on April 2, 1853. His invention was made before Howe’s machine and the Patent Office identified Hunt’s preexistence but it did not issue a patent to him for this. The reason was because he had not filled out the proper paperwork for a patent before Howe’s paperwork application and had abandoned the design. Hunt acquired public acknowledgement for his invention, however Howe’s official patent remained lawful because of the technicality of the timing of the paperwork.

Other inventions

Hunt often used the legal services and research of Charles Grafton Page, a certified patent lawyer who had worked at the Patent Office before, when seeking a potential patent for one of his inventions. Hunt invented a throw-away paper collar and patented the design. This time he negotiated for royalty payments, but the item only became popular after he died. Isaac Singer arranged to pay Hunt $50,000 for his sewing machine design in 1858 in order to clear up the patent confusion about sewing machines, but Hunt died in New York in 1859 before Singer was able to make any payments.

Some of Hunt's important inventions with patent drawings.

• 
  Fountain pen
  Patent 4927
• 
  Safety pin
  Patent 6281
• 
  Nail making machine
  Patent 3305
• 
  Sewing machine Patent #11,161 (issued June 27,1854)

• 
  Swivel-Cap Stopper
  Patent 9,527
• 
  Inkstand
  Patent 4221
• 
  Firing cock repeating gun
  Patent 6663
• 
  Ice Boat
  Patent 958

Personal life

Hunt married Polly Loucks and they had four children. He died of pneumonia in at his place of business on June 8, 1859, and is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery at Brooklyn, New York.

Sources

• Ayres, Robert U. (2021). The History and Future of Technology. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3030713935.

• Meyer, Jerome Sydney (1962). Great Inventions. Pocket Books. OCLC 655232775.

• Hunt, Clinton N. (1935). Walter Hunt, American inventor. C.N. Hunt. OCLC 250585694.

• Kane, Joseph Nathan (1997). Necessity's child : story of Walter Hunt, America's forgotten inventor. McFarland Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7864-0279-3.

• Lamphier, Peg A. (2019). Technical Innovation American History: Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. ABC-CLIO Publishing. ISBN 9781610690942.

External links

• Walter Hunt at Find a Grave
• You Tube video on Walter Hunt's safety pin patent history
• Walter Hunt - The Man Who Invented Sewing Machine
• Walter Hunt on Wikitree