April 1, 2024 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Walter Hunt is known as the Yankee mechanical genius. His hundreds of inventions include a saw, a steamer, ink stands, a nail-making machine, a rifle, a revolver, bullets, bicycles, a shirt collar, a boot heel, and a ceiling-walking circus device. Hunt’s most successful invention was designed in just three hours to settle a $15 debt to one of the many draftsmen he tasked with drawing up his patents. Here’s Ashley Hlebinsky with the story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Walter Hunt is
known as the Yankee mechanical genius. His hundreds of inventions
include a saw, a steamer, inkstands, a nailmaking machine, a rifle,
a revolver, bullets, bicycles, a shirt collar, a boot heel,
and a ceiling walking circus device. Hunt's most successful invention
(00:32):
was designed in just three hours to settle a fifteen
dollars debt to one of the many draftsmen he tasked
with drawing up his patents. Here is our frequent contributor,
Ashley Lebinski with the story. He's the co host of
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the former curator in charge
of the Cody Firearms Museum, and is the co founder
(00:54):
of the University of Wyoming College of Law's Firearms Research Center.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Here's actually, it never ceases to amaze me how often
prolific inventors are left on the cutting room floor of history.
And there's another part of that too, which is you
see in the nineteenth century a lot of inventors who
dabble in multiple different kind of industries. And you see
both of these things happening with one inventor in the
(01:22):
eighteen forties, and so he's the inventor of the safety
pin and a successful lockstitch sewing machine, but he was
also behind some of the most important developments in modern
firearms technology. Walter Hunt was born in upstate New York
in seventeen ninety six, and by his twenty first birthday
he actually earned advanced degrees in masonry and quickly could
(01:45):
have moved on to a career of inventing. And this
man kind of invented a little bit of everything. His
initial inventions surrounded improvements in milling machinery, but he quickly
turned to the eclectic for the rest of his career.
The first major major thing that he's known for was
(02:05):
his invention of a bell that was affixed to a carriage,
so in response to a carriage accident that actually the
carriage ran over a child, Walter Hunt developed this bell
that could be operated by a carriage driver's feet while
safely maintaining hold of the horse's range, basically to send
out a warning so people could hear when the carriage.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Was coming so that they could get out of the way.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
He then went on to invent a fire engine, improvements
in coal burning stoves, a knife, sharpener, artificial stone, rotary,
sweet sweepers, mail sorting machinery, Like I said, very very random,
paraffin oil, candles, shirt collars, fountain pens, and other industrial machinery.
(02:49):
In the mid eighteen thirties, Hunt actually was a pioneer
in terms of the modern sewing machine, although he didn't
initially pursue a patent because he didn't want to hurt
the career of seamstresses. So the women in his life
actually worked as seamstresses, and they were concerned because what
he invented was so efficient, so successful, that they were
(03:10):
worried that they wouldn't have jobs if his invention was
adopted in mass And so he decided, you know, I
did this great thing, but I'm not going to take
out a patent so that I don't mess up a
lot of careers of women in the nineteenth century. By
the eighteen forties, hunt success inventions became really pretty popular.
(03:30):
I have a working theory that within one or two
degrees of separation you can connect something to firearms history
in all of America.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
And part of that is because there was so so.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Much cross contamination in inventions, so a lot of firearms
designers made sewing machines during this timeframe, so of course
Walter Hunt was going to make something with firearms, and
his invention was.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Not the most successful product.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
But what he ultimately did was he created the oldest
direct ancestor to the Winchester lever action rifle. In the
eighteen forties, Walter Hunt developed a firearm which was aptly
named the Hunt Volitional repeating rifle, and it was a
gun that was patented to hold around twelve or so
rounds of ammunition. He was not quite precise in the
amount of ammo that could be held in a magazine
(04:17):
on the firearm. At the same time, he also developed
a form of semi caseless ammunition that paired with his firearm.
During this timeframe, repeating technology with firearms was incredibly common,
and one of the most notable figures that we always
talk about around the same time was cold success with
his revolver. But it wasn't until multiple advanced technologies got
(04:41):
married together in one type of firearm that the pathway
towards mass manufacturer of reliable repeating technology truly took off.
To be completely honest, Hunt's firearm was a total hot
mess and was never produced in mass. In fact, the
only known example is actually at the Cody Firearms Museum
in Wyoming, which houses the entirety of the Winchester Arms collection.
(05:02):
But what was so significant was that several of his
ideas came together to further firearms technology forever.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
And one of those things was the type of ammunition.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So historically speaking, ammunition was kind of loaded separately, so
you had your powder, projectile, you all.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
As individual components.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But he patented a way for the powder, the primer,
the projectile to all be kind of smashed together into one. Now,
it wasn't as successful as later ammunition, but it really
was one of the first times.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
You get it all pushed together.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Another thing that he patented with the hundvoditional repeating rifle
was a tubular magazine, so basically a tube that allows
ammunition to be loaded and then the firearm can fire
multiple rounds in succession before having to reload. So you
didn't have to have a cylinder that was rotating, you
didn't have to have any type of external kind of
component in order to load your firearm.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
You had a tube that was under the barrel, and then.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
On ammunition that was all complete. That allowed for the
gun to fire. One of the other things that the
Huntletional Repeater had was a firing system that was known
as striker fire, which basically uses a pin to strike
the primer of a cartridge in order to fire the gun.
And striker fire is something that's most often associated with
(06:23):
modern firearms, but he's got probably one of the earliest
striker fire guns in American and even international history. You
see it sometimes with early bolt action technology, but for
the most part, this is something that is, you know,
maybe a century ahead of its time.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
What's kind of.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Funny about the development of all of these different things
into a gun that wasn't successful but then ultimately inspired
one of the most iconic guns in American history was
that this small component, this needle like pin that was
used to fire the gun also showed up in other
parts of work. So he created certain pins, you know,
(07:02):
that had pointy tips. But the thing that he is
most known for is the invention of the safety pin.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Now, I don't know if.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The striker fire hunt gun inspired the safety pin. Maybe
I'm making a stretch there or vice versa, but this
is something that he did around the same time that
he was working on the huntvalitional repeating rifle in eighteen
forty nine. And what he was kind of coming up
with here, I guess it goes along with his background
and creating sewing machines, but he was trying to find
(07:32):
a new way that you could attach clothing items together.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And so what he did was he utilized.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
A coil wire design and he added spring tension to
it with a protective clasp to keep the pin and
clothes secured. And if you think about that description, that
kind of sounds exactly like a safety pin a day.
And that's because the design was so inventive and effective
back in the eighteen forties that it really hasn't changed
much since then. Hunt sold this patent for four hundred
(08:01):
dollars to W. R. Grace and Company to pay off
a draftsman he odes, so he had some debts, and
so he saw this as a good opportunity to pay
that off but not necessarily make a lot of money
for himself.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
WR.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Grace would go on to make millions of dollars off
of Hunt's invention, and not unlike Oliver Winchester. I guess
when you think about his firearm that he invented, but
he himself would not see the financial fruits of his labors.
This is kind of one of those sad stories that
you hear a lot throughout invention history. You see a
lot with designers. They come up with this great idea,
(08:35):
but they're kind of, you know, the genius mind, and
then they always end up selling it to the business mind.
I guess a lot of times you get the genius
mind go up against the business mind, and who's going
to win in terms of finances? In that one, It's
probably going to be the business person. And so he
did try to at some point kind of recoup some
of his money by taking the patent out later on
the sewing machine. But his legacy, at least for invention
(08:59):
certainly is survived the test of time, and he's actually
in the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention
of the safety pin. When you look at all the
stuff he made, he probably could be there for a
lot of different reasons, but the fact that the safety
pin is what got him into a Hall of fame
shows how the simplest invention can revolutionize multiple industries even today.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski for sharing with us the story of Walter Hunt.
And by the way, what happened to Hunt selling his
patent for four hundred dollars and the person he sold
it to making a fortune. All Very often the inventors, well,
(09:42):
they don't make the money is it's the businessmen who
know how to take those inventions and make them profitable
and make them able to scale and reach the mass public.
The story of Walter Hunt here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Walter Hunt is
known as the Yankee mechanical genius. His hundreds of inventions
include a saw, a steamer, inkstands, a nailmaking machine, a rifle,
a revolver, bullets, bicycles, a shirt collar, a boot heel,
and a ceiling walking circus device. Hunt's most successful invention
(00:32):
was designed in just three hours to settle a fifteen
dollars debt to one of the many draftsmen he tasked
with drawing up his patents. Here is our frequent contributor,
Ashley Lebinski with the story. He's the co host of
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the former curator in charge
of the Cody Firearms Museum, and is the co founder
(00:54):
of the University of Wyoming College of Law's Firearms Research Center.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Here's actually, it never ceases to amaze me how often
prolific inventors are left on the cutting room floor of history.
And there's another part of that too, which is you
see in the nineteenth century a lot of inventors who
dabble in multiple different kind of industries. And you see
both of these things happening with one inventor in the
(01:22):
eighteen forties, and so he's the inventor of the safety
pin and a successful lockstitch sewing machine, but he was
also behind some of the most important developments in modern
firearms technology. Walter Hunt was born in upstate New York
in seventeen ninety six, and by his twenty first birthday
he actually earned advanced degrees in masonry and quickly could
(01:45):
have moved on to a career of inventing. And this
man kind of invented a little bit of everything. His
initial inventions surrounded improvements in milling machinery, but he quickly
turned to the eclectic for the rest of his career.
The first major major thing that he's known for was
(02:05):
his invention of a bell that was affixed to a carriage,
so in response to a carriage accident that actually the
carriage ran over a child, Walter Hunt developed this bell
that could be operated by a carriage driver's feet while
safely maintaining hold of the horse's range, basically to send
out a warning so people could hear when the carriage.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Was coming so that they could get out of the way.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
He then went on to invent a fire engine, improvements
in coal burning stoves, a knife, sharpener, artificial stone, rotary,
sweet sweepers, mail sorting machinery, Like I said, very very random,
paraffin oil, candles, shirt collars, fountain pens, and other industrial machinery.
(02:49):
In the mid eighteen thirties, Hunt actually was a pioneer
in terms of the modern sewing machine, although he didn't
initially pursue a patent because he didn't want to hurt
the career of seamstresses. So the women in his life
actually worked as seamstresses, and they were concerned because what
he invented was so efficient, so successful, that they were
(03:10):
worried that they wouldn't have jobs if his invention was
adopted in mass And so he decided, you know, I
did this great thing, but I'm not going to take
out a patent so that I don't mess up a
lot of careers of women in the nineteenth century. By
the eighteen forties, hunt success inventions became really pretty popular.
(03:30):
I have a working theory that within one or two
degrees of separation you can connect something to firearms history
in all of America.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
And part of that is because there was so so.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Much cross contamination in inventions, so a lot of firearms
designers made sewing machines during this timeframe, so of course
Walter Hunt was going to make something with firearms, and
his invention was.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Not the most successful product.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
But what he ultimately did was he created the oldest
direct ancestor to the Winchester lever action rifle. In the
eighteen forties, Walter Hunt developed a firearm which was aptly
named the Hunt Volitional repeating rifle, and it was a
gun that was patented to hold around twelve or so
rounds of ammunition. He was not quite precise in the
amount of ammo that could be held in a magazine
(04:17):
on the firearm. At the same time, he also developed
a form of semi caseless ammunition that paired with his firearm.
During this timeframe, repeating technology with firearms was incredibly common,
and one of the most notable figures that we always
talk about around the same time was cold success with
his revolver. But it wasn't until multiple advanced technologies got
(04:41):
married together in one type of firearm that the pathway
towards mass manufacturer of reliable repeating technology truly took off.
To be completely honest, Hunt's firearm was a total hot
mess and was never produced in mass. In fact, the
only known example is actually at the Cody Firearms Museum
in Wyoming, which houses the entirety of the Winchester Arms collection.
(05:02):
But what was so significant was that several of his
ideas came together to further firearms technology forever.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
And one of those things was the type of ammunition.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
So historically speaking, ammunition was kind of loaded separately, so
you had your powder, projectile, you all.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
As individual components.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But he patented a way for the powder, the primer,
the projectile to all be kind of smashed together into one. Now,
it wasn't as successful as later ammunition, but it really
was one of the first times.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
You get it all pushed together.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Another thing that he patented with the hundvoditional repeating rifle
was a tubular magazine, so basically a tube that allows
ammunition to be loaded and then the firearm can fire
multiple rounds in succession before having to reload. So you
didn't have to have a cylinder that was rotating, you
didn't have to have any type of external kind of
component in order to load your firearm.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
You had a tube that was under the barrel, and then.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
On ammunition that was all complete. That allowed for the
gun to fire. One of the other things that the
Huntletional Repeater had was a firing system that was known
as striker fire, which basically uses a pin to strike
the primer of a cartridge in order to fire the gun.
And striker fire is something that's most often associated with
(06:23):
modern firearms, but he's got probably one of the earliest
striker fire guns in American and even international history. You
see it sometimes with early bolt action technology, but for
the most part, this is something that is, you know,
maybe a century ahead of its time.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
What's kind of.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Funny about the development of all of these different things
into a gun that wasn't successful but then ultimately inspired
one of the most iconic guns in American history was
that this small component, this needle like pin that was
used to fire the gun also showed up in other
parts of work. So he created certain pins, you know,
(07:02):
that had pointy tips. But the thing that he is
most known for is the invention of the safety pin.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Now, I don't know if.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
The striker fire hunt gun inspired the safety pin. Maybe
I'm making a stretch there or vice versa, but this
is something that he did around the same time that
he was working on the huntvalitional repeating rifle in eighteen
forty nine. And what he was kind of coming up
with here, I guess it goes along with his background
and creating sewing machines, but he was trying to find
(07:32):
a new way that you could attach clothing items together.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And so what he did was he utilized.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
A coil wire design and he added spring tension to
it with a protective clasp to keep the pin and
clothes secured. And if you think about that description, that
kind of sounds exactly like a safety pin a day.
And that's because the design was so inventive and effective
back in the eighteen forties that it really hasn't changed
much since then. Hunt sold this patent for four hundred
(08:01):
dollars to W. R. Grace and Company to pay off
a draftsman he odes, so he had some debts, and
so he saw this as a good opportunity to pay
that off but not necessarily make a lot of money
for himself.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
WR.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Grace would go on to make millions of dollars off
of Hunt's invention, and not unlike Oliver Winchester. I guess
when you think about his firearm that he invented, but
he himself would not see the financial fruits of his labors.
This is kind of one of those sad stories that
you hear a lot throughout invention history. You see a
lot with designers. They come up with this great idea,
(08:35):
but they're kind of, you know, the genius mind, and
then they always end up selling it to the business mind.
I guess a lot of times you get the genius
mind go up against the business mind, and who's going
to win in terms of finances? In that one, It's
probably going to be the business person. And so he
did try to at some point kind of recoup some
of his money by taking the patent out later on
the sewing machine. But his legacy, at least for invention
(08:59):
certainly is survived the test of time, and he's actually
in the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention
of the safety pin. When you look at all the
stuff he made, he probably could be there for a
lot of different reasons, but the fact that the safety
pin is what got him into a Hall of fame
shows how the simplest invention can revolutionize multiple industries even today.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski for sharing with us the story of Walter Hunt.
And by the way, what happened to Hunt selling his
patent for four hundred dollars and the person he sold
it to making a fortune. All Very often the inventors, well,
(09:42):
they don't make the money is it's the businessmen who
know how to take those inventions and make them profitable
and make them able to scale and reach the mass public.
The story of Walter Hunt here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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