Safety pins are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. But that’s the genius of their design – they work so intuitively they might as well have come from nature. Instead, they were invented by a man who never went to the trouble of patenting them.
In this episode, Josh and Chuck dive into the surprisingly dramatic story of Walter Hunt, the 19th-century inventor behind the humble safety pin—a device so perfectly engineered that it's virtually unchanged today. But Hunt's real tragedy wasn't just selling his safety pin patent for what would be about twelve grand in today's money; it's that he also invented the sewing machine decades before Singer and Howe made it famous, yet chose not to pursue it after his daughter pointed out it would put poor seamstresses out of work. The guys explore Hunt's other wild inventions and how his work unexpectedly became a punk rock fashion staple in the '70s, proving that sometimes being a brilliant inventor doesn't mean you'll get the recognition or riches you deserve.
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