The subject
of photograph was not nearer – at least
two buildings away – now the test to you is – see the picture below for a moment and
close .. .. tell, what you saw ? – how many clothe clips ? .. .. and do you know what a bull-dog clip is ?
Elementary,
dear Watson – lockdown has taught us many skills – cutting vegetables, washing
clothes, cooking, cleaning utensils,
mopping the floor, spread the wet clothes on ropes in terrace, put clothe-clips
properly, collect them back when dried .. and more !! .. ..
there was a time, when people would get up, drink coffee, have
break-fast, rush to office, return home late, have dinner, sleep – get up, have
coffee .. .. and from Mar 2020, life
has changed !!
A clothespin (US English),
or clothes peg (UK English) is a fastener used to hang up clothes for drying,
usually on a clothes line. Clothespins often come in many different designs.
Dhobikhanas – places where
clothes were washed were located nearer river beds and donkeys were used in
carrying clothes .. .. in the early days, laundered clothes were hung on
bushes, branches of tree and perhaps dried on terraces by placing some stones
on them as weight. The simple daily utility tool of ‘cloth-clip’
was born of absolute necessity.
Obviously, in India, we have not recorded the date and chronology of
their usage nor patented them – elsewhere it was, and that is documented as
history.
The clothespin for hanging up wet laundry only
appears in the early 19th century patented by Jérémie Victor Opdebec. That design did not use springs, but was fashioned
in one piece, with the two prongs part of the peg chassis with only a small
distance between them—this form of peg creates the gripping action due to the
two prongs being wedged apart and thus squeezing together. This form of peg is often fashioned from
plastic, or originally, wood. In England, clothes-peg making used to be a craft
associated with the Romani people, commonly known by the slur gypsy, who made
clothes-pegs from small, split lengths of willow or ash wood. In 1853 David M. Smith of Springfield,
Vermont invented a clothespin with two prongs connected by a fulcrum, plus a
spring. By a lever action, when the two
prongs are pinched at the top of the peg, the prongs open up, and when
released, the spring draws the two prongs shut, creating the action necessary
for gripping.
The design by Smith was
improved by Solon E. Moore in 1887. He added what he called a "coiled
fulcrum" made from a single wire, this was the spring that held the wooden
pieces together, acted as a spring forcing them to shut, and as a fulcrum on
which the two halves could rock, eliminating the need for a separate component,
and reducing manufacturing costs. This
became the first successful spring-actuated clothespin, being manufactured and
sold in huge quantities all across the United States.
The state of Vermont, and
its capitol of Montpelier, in particular, quickly became what The New York
Times called "The Silicon Valley of Clothespin Manufacturing", the
United States Clothespin Company (U.S.C. Co.) opened in 1887 to manufacture
Moore's improved design. Vermonter Stephen Thomas, served as company president,
and the company enjoyed a significant level of success, in spite of the
competitors that rapidly sprang up in Waterbury and other places. In 1909, Allan Moore, one of the U.S.C. Co.
employees, devised a way in which clothespins could be manufactured more
cheaply, by eliminating one of the coils in the "spring fulcrum". He
left the company, and with a loan from a local entrepreneur opened a competing
factory, literally across the street from the U.S.C. Co. building. The new
National Clothespin Company rapidly overtook the U.S.C. Co., consuming 500,000
board-feet of lumber at the height of production.
After WWI, cheap imports
from Europe began to flood the market, in spite of repeated calls for
protective tariffs by Vermont, and the state industry went into decline; in
1920, it cost 58 cents to manufacture one gross of clothespins in Vermont,
while imported Swedish clothespins were sold for 48 cents a gross. The
situation worsened after WWII, and the introduction of the electric clothes
dryer diminished demand for clothespins, further damaging the industry; the
U.S.C. Co. was forced to close its doors before the end of the 1940s. However,
the National Clothespin Company, who had previously moved from its original
location across the street, and had been sold to a new owner, managed to stay
in business by virtue of a contract with the F.W. Woolworths department store
chain. In this fashion, they managed to hang on through the following decades,
in spite of a disastrous fire in 1978. The profit margin was eaten into further
by the increasing volume cheap Chinese imports; the familiar pleas for
protective tariffs were continued, but to no result.
The survival of the
spring-hinged clothespin into the modern era is an unlikely story of Darwinian
selection. From 1852 to 1887, the U.S. patent office issued 146 separate
patents for clothespins. Most other
designs of the era, like Edmund Krelwitz’s bulky “improved clothes-pin” —
consisting of “one continuous strip of sheet metal” that was “bent in the shape
of a U” — have been lost to the same laundry purgatory where single socks must
go. Samuel Pryor of Salem, N. J., received the first American patent for a
clothespin in 1832. But his model was lost in a fire that destroyed the U.S.
patent office four years later. It wasn’t until the late 1840s that clothespins
began to be mass-produced.
In the age of Maytag, the
clothespin’s survival can be attributed, in part, to its usefulness in craft
projects and how easily it can be converted into reindeer. Yet the industry has
declined, and many domestic clothespin makers — like the Penley Corporation —
have closed shop. Looking backward, the
clothespin is a relatively easy way to dry your clothes without having to lay
them on the ground or drape them over something. The clothespin hasn’t changed for over 150
years.
Before
concluding – a ‘bulldog clip’ is a
device for temporarily but firmly binding sheets of paper together. It consists
of a rectangular sheet of springy steel curved into a cylinder, with two flat
steel strips inserted to form combined handles and jaws. The user presses the
two handles together, causing the jaws to open against the force of the spring,
then inserts a stack of papers and releases the handles. You will well remember our Examination Pads,
some with clips fixed while the ingenuous ones carried a calendar with bulldog
clip attached ! The spring forces the jaws together, gripping the papers
firmly.
.. .. and most likely that you have watched the photo
and correctly counted the clips .. I was not
picturising the beauty of clips but the woodpecker. The google image terms it to
be an ‘acorn woodpecker’ a name formally
described in 1827 by the English naturalist William John Swainson under the
binomial name Picus formicivorus from a specimen collected in Mexico. The specific epithet combines the Latin
formica meaning "ant" with -vorus meaning "eating". This chirpy bird is difficult locate on the
tree but for the sound it makes !!
Interesting !
26.5.2021.
Collated from soures : Wikipedia, NYtimes, Economist, & more.
