One of the small, ubiquitous objects we take for granted these days is the thumbtack. They’re such a good way to temporarily attach papers, posters, notices, and the like to a vertical surface that many offices are designed with walls to accommodate thumbtacks. They’re everywhere, and so vanishingly inexpensive that I’ll bet you can’t even estimate how much a single one would cost. Not that you can buy a single one, of course — if you need a tack, somebody will just give you one.
But it wasn’t always this way. Thomas Blanchard was born June 24, 1788 in Massachusetts in the US, and the world he was born into was astonishingly bereft of thumbtacks. They weren’t ubiquitous at all, and people certainly could estimate the value of a single one, because that was how they were sold. They were valuable enough that Blanchard, along with his brother, started out by earning his living making tacks. Each one had to be made by hand, and selling the humble tacks supported the two brothers.
But Blanchard, who was in his teens, was not satisfied. Making tacks by hand is blood boring, especially if your mind turns to more complex mechanical solutions. Blanchard’s mind did just that, and when he was about 18 he patented his first invention: a machine that made 500 tacks per hour. Not only that, but the machine-made tacks were actually better than the handmade ones.
The inventor wasn’t any more interested in running a tack-making machine than he was in handcrafting tacks, and he sold his machine for a fortune in 1806; $5,000. He looked around for another interesting project, and noticed that a company was building a factory nearby to make rifles. He had a talk with them about an idea he had, and they hired him. It took him a while, but by 1822 he’d built a machine that would take a bar of steel and turn it into a finished rifle barrel all in one operation. Along the way he also built the first “copying lathe” that could trace a wooden gun stock and produce an identical one automatically. Later on (much later; about the 1850s) his copying lathe system was used to create standard-sized lasts — the forms shaped like human feet that were used to make shoes — and that was the first time shoes began to be available in standardized sizes.
Around 1825 railroads were still in the future for the US. Transportation was limited to country roads and lanes. Blanchard had a solution though; he built a steam-powered wagon that he called a “horseless carriage.” This was not only the first automobile-like conveyance, but actually predated railroads (at least in his part of the world). It may be that he drove it to a nice place overlooking a river, because his next invention was one of the world’s first steamboats. Steamboats of his design were used on rivers as far west as the Mississippi.
Blanchard’s patents prior to 1830 — the actual papers, that is — were destroyed by a fire. But his later patents, for various types of manufacturing equipment, a device to cut and fold envelopes (envelopes were a new innovation at the time), and several machines to help in various aspects of shipbuilding, still survive.
You’d think that Blanchard’s name would be attached to at least one of his innovations. Why, for example, do we say “thumbtacks” rather than “Blanchards”? But he’s been largely overlooked in the annals of inventors, even though he was one of the first and foremost mechanical innovators in North America. Still, you can give him a nod the next time you use an envelope, a thumbtack, or buy a pair of shoes in a particular size.
