Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/108

Rh 98 P I N P I N pin-making machines were invented in the United States. During the war of 1812, when the price of pins rose enormously, the manufacture was actually started, but the industry was not fairly successful till about the year 1836. Previous to this an American, Mr Lemuel W. Wright of Massachusetts, had in 1824 secured in England a patent for a pin-making machine, which established the industry on its present basis. The old form of pin, which has become obsolete only within the memory of middle-aged persons, consisted of a shank with a separate head of fine wire twisted round and secured to it. The formation and attachment of this head were the principal points to which inven tive ingenuity was directed. The old method of heading involved numerous operations, which had to be expeditiously accomplished, and, notwithstanding the expertness of the workers, the result was frequently unsatisfactory. Fine wire for heads was first wound on a lathe round a spit the exact circumference of the pin shanks to be headed. In this way a long elastic spiral was produced which had next to be cut into heads, each consisting of two complete turns of the spiral. These heads were softened by annealing and made into a heap for the heading boy, whose duty was to thrust a number of shanks into the heap and let as many as might be fit themselves with heads. Such shanks as came out tlius beaded were passed to the header, who with a falling block and die arrangement compressed together shank and head of such a number as his die-block was fitted for. All the other operations of straightening the wire, cutting, pointing, &c., were separately performed, and these numer ous details connected with the production of a common pin were seized on by Adam Smith as one of the most remarkable illustrations of the advantages of the division of labour. The beautiful automatic machinery by which pins are now made of single pieces of wire is an invention of the present century. In 1817 a communication was made at the Patent Office by Seth Hunt, describing a machine for making pins with &quot; bead, shaft, and point in one entire piece.&quot; By this machine a suitable length of wire was cut off and held in a die till a globular head was formed on one end by compression, and the other end was pointed by the re volution around it of a roughened steel wheel. This machine does not appear to have come into use; but in 1824 Wright patented the pin-making apparatus above referred to as the parent form of the machinery now employed. An extension for five years, from 1838, of Wright s patent, with certain additions and improvements, was secured by Henry Shuttlewortb and Daniel Foote Tayler, and in the hands of Taylor s firm in Birmingham the development of the machine has principally taken place. In a pin-making machine as now used wire of suitable gauge running off a reel is drawn in and straightened by passing between straightening pins or studs set in a table. When a pin length lias entered it is caught by lateral. jaws, beyond which enough of tbe end projects to form a pin-head. Against this end a steel punch advances and compresses the metal by a die arrangement into tbe form of a head. The pin length is immediately cut off and the headed piece drops into a slit suffi ciently wide to pass the wire through but retain the head. The pins are consequently suspended by the head while their projecting points are held against a revolving file-cut steel roller, along the face of which they are carried by gravitation till they fall out at the extremity well-pointed pins. The pins are next purified by boiling in weak beer ; and, so cleaned, they are arranged in a copper pan in layers alternating with layers of grained tin. The contents of the pan are covered with water over which a quantity of argol (bitartrate of potash) is sprinkled, and after boiling for several hours the brass pins are coated with a thin deposit of tin, which gives them their silvery appearance. They are then washed in clean water and dried by revolving in a barrel, mixed with dry bran or fine sawdust, from which they are winnowed finished pins. A large proportion of the pins sold are stuck into paper by an automatic machine not less ingenious than the pin-making machine itself. Mourning pins are made of iron wire, finished by immers ing in black japan and drying in a stove. A considerable variety of pins, including the ingeniously coiled, bent, and twisted nursery safety pin, ladies hair pins, &c., are also made by automatic machin ery. The sizes of ordinary pins range from the 3J-inch stout blanket pin down to the finest slender gilt pins used by entomolo gists, 4500 of which weigh about an ounce. A few years ago it was estimated that in the United Kingdom there were made daily 50,000,000 pins, of which 37,000,000 were produced in Birmingham, and the weight of brass and iron wire then annually consumed vas stated at 1275^ tons, of which one-eighth part was iron wire. The annual value of the whole British trade was stated at 222,000. At the same time the consumption of wire in pin-making in the United State* was estimated to be from 350 to 500 tons per annum, the value of the trade being 112,000. (J. PA. ) PINDAR, the greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece whose work is represented by large remains, was born about 522 B.C., being thus some thirty-four years younger than Simonides of Ceos. His father s name was Dai- Descen phantus ; his birthplace the village of Cynoscephala? near Thebes in Bceotia. The traditions of his family, which claimed a proud descent, have left their impress on his poetry, and are not without importance for a correct estimate of his relation to his contemporaries. The clan of the JEgeiddd tracing their line from the hero ^Egeus belonged to the &quot; Cadmean &quot; element of Thebes, i.e., to the elder nobility whose supposed date went back to the days of the founder Cadmus. A branch of the Theban ^Egeidae had been settled in Achrean times at Amycla) in the valley of the Eurotas (Pind. Isthm. vi. 14), and after the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus had apparently been adopted by the Spartans into one of the three Dorian tribes. The Spartan /Egeidaj helped to colonize the island of Thera (Pyth. v. 68). Another branch of the race was settled at Gyrene in Africa ; and Pindar tells how his /Egid clansmen at Thebes &quot; showed honour &quot; to Gyrene as often as they kept the festival of the Carneia (Pyth. . 75). Pindar is to be conceived, then, as standing within the circle of those families for whom the heroic myths were domestic records. He had a personal link with the memories which everywhere were most cherished by Dorians, no less than with those which appealed to men of &quot; Cadmean &quot; or of Achaean stock. And the wide ramifications of the ^Egeidte throughout Hellas rendered it peculiarly fitting that a member of that illustrious clan should celebrate the glories of many cities in verse which was truly Panhellenic. Pindar is said to have received his first lessons in flute- Life. playing from one Scopelinus at Thebes, and afterwards to have studied at Athens under the musicians Apollodorus (or Agathocles) and Lasus of Hermione. In his youth, as the story went, he was defeated in a poetical contest by the Theban Corinna who, in reference to his use of Theban mythology, is said to have advised him &quot; to sow with the hand, not with the sack.&quot; There is an extant fragment in which Corinna reproves another Theban poetess, Myrto, &quot; for that she, a woman, contended with Pindar &quot; (on j3ava &amp;lt;ovo~ e/?a YLivSapoio TTOT (.piv) a senti ment, it may be remarked, which does not well accord with the story of Corinna s own victory. The facts that stand out from these meagre traditions are that Pindar was precocious and laborious. Preparatory labour of a somewhat severe and complex kind was, indeed, indispens able for the Greek lyric poet of that age. Lyric composi tion demanded studies not only in metre but in music, and in the adaptation of both to the intricate movements of the choral dance (op^cm*?/). Several passages in Pindar s extant odes glance at the long technical develop ment of Greek lyric poetry before his time, and at the various elements of art which the lyrist was required to temper into a harmonious whole (see, e.g., 01. iii. 8, vi. 91, ix. 1, xiv. 15, xiii. 18 ; Pyth. xii. 23, &c.). The earliest ode which can be dated (Pyth. x.) belongs to the twentieth year of Pindar s age (502 B.C.) ; the latest (Olymp. v.) to the seventieth (452 B.C.). He visited the court of Hiero at Syracuse ; Theron, the despot of Acragas, also entertained him ; and his travels perhaps included Gyrene. Tradition notices the special closeness of his relations with Delphi: &quot; He was greatly honoured by all the Greeks, because he was so beloved of Apollo that he even received a share of the offerings ; and at the sacrifices the priest would cry aloud that Pindar come in to the feast of the god.&quot; 1 He is said to have died at Argos, at the age of seventy-nine, in 443 B.C. 1 Tlivfjdpov ytvos, in eel. Aid.: fri/j.fjd-r] St ff&amp;lt;p68pa uirb iravrcav rcav E.T)vci&amp;gt;v 5m rb virb rou AiroAAcoror OVTU (piXelaOat ws Ka /iitpiSa rwv Trpoir&amp;lt;pepofj.tvwv rtf 6tf Kafifiavfiv, KO. T)&amp;gt;V lepta fioav eV rats Ovffiais Tltvfiapov tirl ri Stltrvov TOV Oeov.