Have you ever wondered how small things we use  at home and office  have made our life easier and comfortable? Strangely, we  least remember the inventors of these contraptions or we don’t even try to find out who the were.

Safety pins

Take the safety pins for instance.  Is there  any home right up to the smallest village level without safety  pins?  It’s such a small thing to handle too. I often think how mothers some 1000 years back kept their baby’s napkin firm in the child’s hindquarters.

Mr. Walter Hunt, an American designed the first safety pin in 1849 to keep pieces of clothes together. This was made from a single piece of steel wire.  Not seeing much prospects for the invention, he sold off his patent  for $ 400 dollars to a friend to pay off a debt. But later in April 1849, he obtained a patent for an improved model of a steel wire  coiled at one end and the protruding end locked in a crevice.  By and large we use this model even today.

Ask any Home maker if she could administer her house  without safety pins.  She would say an emphatic NO.

Hair clips

According to records, hair clips were designed and patented by Kelly Chamandi  in 1925.  This is an offshoot of safety pins and was introduced some 75 years after the safety pins. Why such a long time gap, is difficult to comprehend.  Possibly the ladies in those days didn’t need them.  Not so in present time. No lady regardless of the hair style she is used to, could live without hair clips. A cheap material but very valuable for keeping the hair from flying off.

Push pins

We use them for pinning together sheets of paper usually in offices. In recent times staplers have come into use but yet push pins are much more effective and preferred by the office goers. It is not known who invented this but  since no ingenuity was required,   the manufacturers have been concentrating  their effort on producing a number of varieties. Several models have come into the market such as  map pins with colourful  heads  and flat pins etc.

We didn’t have the push pins in India for many years.  I still remember the office clerks and superintendents using ‘thorns’ to keep stacks of paper around the year 1935.  Push pins possibly came to India during World War II.  It’s a valuable piece  in all types of offices and banks. But for the push pin we wouldn’t know how to keep two sheets of paper together.

Sewing needle

It appears  that Muslims in Spain used  needles with an eyelet through which a thread was passed for stitching clothes or mending them.  They were driven out of  Spain in the 15^th century.  The needle concept was then taken by them  to Arabian lands and later found its way to England in the 17^th century.  The design was perfected and  mass produced in England,

Thread and needle are valuable items in any home even today. How will you stitch your buttons without thread and needle?.

Sewing machines

I feel that one of  the greatest inventions for man kind is the sewing machine. It is an equipment which cannot be replaced nor could we do without it.

The fore runner for a sewing machine is a needle with an eyelet.  It was Walter Hunt (Safety pin fame)  who used the needle to produce a sewing machine of sorts in the year 1849. He lost interest in it thinking that it would create unemployment. One Elias Howe reinvented the machine whose design was copied by Isaac Merrit Singer  who made further improvement by placing the needle vertically  and a presser foot to keep the cloth in place, along with a shuttle  underneath. Thus came into being the modern sewing machine and has been  monopolized by Merrit Singer.

I wonder how life would be if there are no sewing machines and tailors around  in the world. You have to then wrap round your body a five meter long cloth to go outside your home.  Could you imagine yourself walking  like a ghost on the streets? That would have been  your apparel in the absence  of a sewing machine and tailor.

Stethoscope

In spite of digital electronics and associated devices, it is the Stethoscope which continues to be  a Physician’s pass port.  Have you ever seen any doctor without stethoscope garland  round his neck?  You snatch it away, any doctor would feel most miserable.

One Rene Laennec, a French man, was the inventor of the  stethoscope. He was serving as a physician in  1816  and he wanted to examine the condition of his patient’s heart.  He took a  thick paper, rolled it into a cylinder shape, put one end on the patient’s heart and the other end to his ear. He heard the heart  beats clearly.  Thus came into being the stethoscope to feel the heart beats all over the upper portion of a human body.    Though  the invention is some two hundred years old, the world has not found a replacement for it and as cheap.

The above are inexpensive things and are  commonly available which make our life easy.  Don’t you think we need to thank the inventors? Further more, they have become  inseparable parts of our daily life and are irreplaceable inventions too.  They may go on and on for centuries.

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