You must have often heard the statement necessity is the mother of invention ? Lets assume you are working on making a product or a service better ? Do you work on incremental innovation or reinvention or ? what makes sense ? It depends on the time vs costs vs quality vs solution fit decision.
This narrative illustrates taking what was already there in a basic version (a pin like contraption) and reinventing it by changing the technology core(adding a spring) .
Engineer Walter Hunt was born in New York in 1796, Hunt spent his whole life inventing. One of his most impactful inventions was also one of his smallest: the safety pin.
Desperate times call for desperate measures ….Hunt developed the safety pin out of necessity. He was $15 in debt — no small sum in the 19th century — and mulling over how he could create something to pay the bills.
While twisting a wire, he landed on a new idea: a pin that folds into itself and can be clasped. And so the modern safety pin was born.
Versions of a safety pin had existed since the ancient world. Known as fibulae, they were pins that could be fastened. Yet Hunt built on the earlier fibulae by adding a spring to pins, which would make for a more secure, tighter fastener.
Though the safety pin would go on to become a household staple, Hunt did not see the bulk of his invention’s worth. He had sold the rights to it for $400.
