Walter Hunt 
is a 
man who is simultaneously considered to have
possessed one of the finest inventive minds
in all of American history while also being
an individual almost no one has ever heard.
This is despite the fact that it’s almost
guaranteed that one of his inventions is currently
lying somewhere in your home, the safety pin.
This was something he sold the patent for
for a few hundred dollars, reportedly as he
needed the money to pay off a $15 debt.
This was a theme throughout his life- inventing
various items that otherwise should have made
him extremely wealthy and famous, but which
never did because of his proclivity to sell
his patents immediately and move on to his
next great invention.
Because we’d be here all day if we discussed
in any level of detail everything Hunt patented
during his lifetime, instead we’ll give
you a small smattering of examples so you
can get an idea of how prolific an inventor
he was.
Along with the safety pin and the first commercially
viable lockstitch sewing machine, Hunt invented
and patented a more efficient oil lamp, an
attachment to boats that allowed them to break
through ice, various improvements on bullet
and casing designs, a rope making machine,
a machine that made nails, an improved fountain
pen, a portable knife sharpener, an innovative
saw, a coal heated convection oven, an early
version of the repeating rifle, and, most
incredibly of all, a device that allowed the
user to walk on the ceiling, dubbed the “antipodean
apparatus”, which he sold to a circus.
While some of these inventions are antiquated
and seldom used today, others were pretty
revolutionary, in particular the repeating
rifle, which Hunt dubbed the Volitional Repeating
Rifle.
He sold the patent for that to a businessman,
George Arrowsmith, who then sold it to the
founders of Smith and Wesson, Benjamin Tyler
Henry, Horace Smith, and Daniel B. Wesson.
The design of Hunt’s rifle was studied by
and improved upon by the trio, eventually
serving as the basis for the Henry Repeating
Rifle, famed for its widespread use in the
American Civil War.
This latter rifle, in turn, was the basis
for the more famous Winchester Repeater, arguably
one of the most famous guns of all time.
Hunt saw little recognition for his contributions
to the weapon and never received any royalties
or payment beyond the relatively paltry sum
given for the original patent, which was basically
the story of Hunt’s life.
Born in 1796 on a small farm in Lewis County,
New York, Hunt’s beginnings were humble
and his education was surprisingly lacking
for a man who’d later be renowned for his
keen mechanical mind.
Supposedly educated in a one room schoolhouse,
Hunt, the eldest of thirteen children, left
formal education in his early teens and settled
into the life of a simple farmer.
However, his curiosity for tinkering soon
found him helping out at a nearby textile
mill, where many of his family members worked
and where he helped the owner, Willis Hoskins,
and another worker, Ziba Knox, make improvements
to a flax spinning machine used there.
Despite helping the pair improve the machine,
the young Hunt was left off the patent.
However, soon after this, Hunt went and invented
an even better flax spinning machine and patented
that in 1826.
Hunt then endeavoured to manufacture and sell
this machine to secure a better life for himself
and his young family.
(He married his childhood sweetheart in his
teens and eventually the pair had four children.)
Towards this end, Hunt travelled to New York
and attempted to find investors to back production,
but became increasingly frustrated when nobody
would give him the time of day.
(It’s presumed Hunt’s small town upbringing
and lack of formal education made it difficult
for him to assure banks and investors he could
be trusted with their money.)
Running short on funds, Hunt sold the patent
for the machine, using the funds to relocate
his family to New York, hoping to find his
fortune there with his next invention.
In 1827, Hunt filed for his second patent,
this time for a foot operated gong to be fitted
in carriages.
Hunt was said to have been inspired to create
this device after witnessing a small girl
hit by a horse carriage.
This sort of thing was not totally uncommon
at a time when carriages and people shared
the road.
To help get around the problem, many carriages
had air horns installed.
However, to sound the horn required the driver
to have one hand free to operate it, which
was occasionally a problem if both hands were
needed to drive the horses.
A foot pedal operated gong neatly solved the
issue.
Again, despite the appeal and necessity of
his invention being immediately obvious, Hunt
similarly had trouble securing an investor
to fund manufacturing of the device and so
he sold the patent and moved on to his next
invention.
Why Hunt opted to nearly always choose to
sell his patents outright rather than hold
onto them or ask for royalties as a part of
the sale agreement isn’t fully clear, though
given that he was not independently or otherwise
wealthy, one assumes he simply always had
need of the money to support his family, so
was inclined to take the quick money, rather
than lesser amounts upfront but better long
term prospects in royalties.
And given how prolific an inventor he was,
it may well be he just always assumed he’d
be able to come up with something new to keep
money coming in, which, to be fair, is exactly
what happened throughout his life.
Perhaps the best example of Hunt selling a
world-changing patent occurred in 1849 when
a draftsman called J.R Chapin began pressuring
Hunt to settle a $15 debt (about $422 today).
Low on funds, Hunt did what he always did
to settle debts- he sat down and invented
something- the modern safety pin, reportedly
after just three hours of playing around with
a spool of wire.
While Hunt’s invention wasn’t a totally
new idea, with variations on clothing pins
going all the way back to the 14th century
BCE, it was a massive improvement on anything
that came before thanks to the clasp at the
end keeping anyone from getting poked and
the coiled wire design giving enough spring
to keep the pin locked in place even as the
person wearing it moved around.
Just as important to the design being extremely
functional, the whole thing was also incredibly
easy and cheap to manufacture.
As a testament to the design’s simplicity
and functionality, unlike many products that
have evolved over time, in the near two centuries
since Hunt invented the safety pin, the basic
design hasn’t really changed at all.
As he had done so often before, Hunt sold
the patent for the safety pin for a reported
$400 (about $11,000 today), with the rights
to it ultimately ending up in the hands of
W.R. Grace and Company, who would go on to
make many millions of dollars off the product.
Perhaps Hunt’s third most famous invention,
outside of the safety pin and the repeating
rifle, was one of the first commercially viable
sewing machines that used a then revolutionary
two threaded lockstich mechanism (see a graphic
of how it works here) still commonly used
today.
Legend has it Hunt refused to patent his 1833
automated sewing machine invention because
he didn’t want to put seamstresses out of
work, so didn’t push the invention with
various companies as he didn’t want to see
it made.
However, this commonly touted notion seems
questionable as, while he didn’t patent
the idea, he did sell the rights to make the
machine to the aforementioned George Arrowsmith.
Arrowsmith then attempted to manufacture the
sewing machine, but had difficult raising
the needed capital from investors owing to
something of an overabundance of seamstresses
working on the cheap at the time.
Thus, he gave up on the project, choosing,
like Hunt before him, to not even bother patenting
it.
It would be over a decade after this before
someone else would come up with another commercially
viable sewing machine- most notable to the
story at hand, Elias Howe, Jr.
Howe seemingly independently invented and
patented his own lockstitch sewing machine
that pretty much worked exactly like Hunt’s.
Soon after, various companies, most notably
Singer Sewing Machines, started copying and
selling Howe’s design, at which point Howe
began suing them.
During the course of litigation, Hunt’s
previous invention was brought to light, with
the companies then arguing that Howe’s patent
was invalid because Hunt had long before invented
more or less the same machine using the innovative
lockstich.
And as Hunt hadn’t patented his design,
they felt they were free to copy it.
It was at this point that Hunt himself got
into the game and decided to see if he could
retroactively get a patent or otherwise force
said companies to pay him for use of his design.
At the same time, he began work once again
on the sewing machine, coming up with an improved
design that solved the then common jamming
problem via automatically feeding the cloth
in at an even rate, and then patenting that
improvement.
True to form, he swiftly sold the rights to
the patent after receiving it.
While the patent office refused to give Hunt
a retroactive patent for the original design,
they did acknowledge that he invented the
device, but that Howe’s patent was still
valid owing to Howe having applied for a patent
first.
Nevertheless, in 1858, Singer Sewing Machines,
which is still around today, settled with
Hunt out of court, agreeing to pay him $50,000
(about $1.4 million today) for their copying
his original design and subsequently making
a fortune off it.
And so it was that Hunt finally made a small
fortune off one of his inventions… right?
Well, no.
He died of pneumonia shortly after the agreement
was made and before the $50,000 settlement
was due to be paid to him.
His family, however, reportedly did benefit
from the settlement.
Funny enough, Hunt’s final resting place
is in the same cemetery as Howe’s, Green-Wood
Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Seemingly fitting given how his life went,
Hunt’s grave marker, while more than a simple
gravestone as is often reported, is dwarfed
by Howe’s mini-monument.
In the end, while he never made a fortune
off his various inventions that did make other
people rich, nor was he well-known in life
or death like so many other prolific inventors,
the New York Tribune did at least publish
an article about Hunt after he passed away,
noting,
For more than 40 years, he has been known
as an experiment in the arts.
Whether in mechanical movements, chemistry,
electricity or metallic compositions, he was
always at home: and, probably in all, he has
tried more experiments than any other inventor.
