5 Everyday Items Inventors Improved

Our day-to-day life is filled with items that we mostly overlook and often take for granted. These elements of our everyday are on the whole merely improvements of gadgets and instruments that mankind has depended on for millennia. 

Given the power of the manufacturing age and mass production, here are five examples of inventors, machines, and improvements that took a good idea and with upgrades that became bigger than life and ubiquitous. 

Paper bag

Before reusable totes, there were bags, unhandled, simple, and made of paper that we used to carry and store everything from our lunch to items we just purchased at the grocery store. Paper bags became part of everyday life. 

The version of the American paper bag and the one that most of us recognize came about because of the shortcomings of earlier versions. Invented by Francis Wolle in the 1850s, these bags could be compared to oversized envelopes. 

It was an American inventor, Margaret E. Knight, that in the 1870s transformed the design of the paper bag and the machine that produced them. Her breakthrough was simple but effective—a square, flat-bottom base that allowed the bag to stand upright on its own. 

She built the machine that accomplished the cutting, folding, and gluing that enabled mass production of paper bags. The “pneumatic paper-feeder” featured a three-step folding process to form the flat bottom. 

Safety pin

Archologists have found and catalogued coiled bronze pins, metal fasteners embellished with gems, and long garment holders that were practical as well as ornamental. In fact, the current design of the safety pin is a modern improvement on an ancient design.

The inventor credited with the practical coiled piece of steel wire, sharpened at one end with a catch at the other is Walter Hunt. The story told is that in 1825 the American mechanical engineer owed money and needed to pay his debt. He designed a "safe pin" for securing clothing and protecting fingers. 

He eventually patented the design in 1849 and sold his idea for $400. The safety pin has remained virtually unchanged ever since. However, the mechanized process to manufacture the pins has improved as well as the material used, steel. In 1864, E.J. Manville invented an “automatic four slide machine” –a forerunner of how they are made today.

Pencil

The patent for mechanical pencils came about early in the 19th century and has all-but replaced the old standby. But the story of the American manufacture of pencils made from graphite and wood began with Ebenezer Wood of Acton, Mass., who decided to automate the process at his dam-powered mill inNashoba Brook. 

Wood was the first to craft the writing instrument with hexagon- and octagon-shaped wooden casings. Wood, however, didn’t patent his invention, instead he shared his methods. 

One student of Wood was Eberhard Faber, who built a New York factory and became the leader in pencil production in the United States. By the end of the century, over 240,000 pencils were used each day in the U.S. Manufactures preferred cedar wood for production, since it did not splinter when sharpened. 

Parachute

Inventors came up with the idea of an emergency escape mechanism—a parachute—long before airplanes were invented. It was Leonardo Da Vinci who firstposited the idea at least in sketch, if not in design. 

The modern parachute is credited to James Floyd Smith who began the Pioneer Parachute Company in 1938. He was a machinist who built his own airplane and taught himself to fly. The U.S. Army recruited him for its parachute design team where he entered his own design into the Army’s best parachute competition. 

The design changes he made to the original model include adding a rip cord and improved parachute pack (the “Floyd Smith Safety Pack”). Smith also invented the “Floyd Smith Safety Seat” that featured an attached parachute that during an emergency could be dropped through the bottom of an airplane’s fuselage. 

Safety razor

King Camp Gillette is credited with inventing the modern safety razor. Popular in the early 1900s, the razor was thin, inexpensive, and disposable. Born in Fond du Lac, Wis., he was raised in Chicago. When men were shaving with straight razors, he recognized not only theappeal of a razor that was cheap and did not need sharpening, but more so the business model that sought to meet a continuous need.

History recognized that the most difficult part of development was engineering the blades. The steel needed to be thin and sharp—and that was difficult. It was a machinist, Steven Porter, working with Gillette, who took Gillette’s drawings to form the first disposable razor blade that worked. 

William Emery Nickerson, an expert machinist and partner of Gillette, then changed the original model, improving the handle and frame so that it could better support the thin steel blade. It was Nickerson that designed the machinery to mass-produce the blades, and he received patents for hardening and sharpening the blades.

Cathy Cecere is membership content program manager.