Hello there
Before starting I need to apologise to the fraternity of Pin experts (yes they do exist) for a short and inexact story.
Pin Making was an important industry in Birmingham, dress making, clothes pins, fastening pins, hair pins, hat pins. etc.
Pin making wa held up as a model of how the industrial revolution took hold. Early on one person drew the wire, forged the head (attached a decoration if reqired), sharpened the point and then polished the pin. The important step was breaking this down so a specialist undertook each stage passing the pin on. This gave the insight for automation.
Birminghham had alway made pins but the epicenter was around Stroud in Gloucestershire. One of first automated pin making machine was rather unuccessful, but made in Birmingham by Daniel Foot-Taylor 1838, from an even more unsuccessful London patent. Meanwhile the Watkins family in Gloucestershire were being equaly inventive, Peter Watkins visited Birmingham to learn about machinery, then automated parts of his process and keep their slice of a world market.
(Peter Watkins was an outstanding engineering inovator).
The Americans entered the fray with superior tooling and made a machine that could almost make the whole of a simple pin. There followed a period of industrial espionage between Gloucestershire Birmingham and the USA with craftsmen beavering back and forth.. The Gloucester firms amalgamated,split and reformed in a confusing turbulent fashion with apprentice engineers starting up, or joining different firms.
In 1842 Edelsten Williams and Moore, by now big players, had moved the larger part of their machinery and production to the Newhall Works in Birmingham. Where did this huge trade go? Hair and Hat pins went out of fashion, in the early 20th century German & Czech pins undercut uk prices, and the old empire started making their own. Several of Watkins family had moved to Birmingham, one of them bing my great auntx2 Keturah Atwood Watkins who looked after the family interests, one of which involved the 'Kirby Grip' company.
Who remembers Kirby Grips?