The Loop-Spring Clothes-Pin: A Sugar-Tong Spring and Metal Pivots in Two Wooden Arms

A spring clothes-pin whose spring also serves as its hinge pulls its wooden arms apart and tears loose from them. George Topping of Chicago received US 166,160, dated 27 July 1875, for a clothes-pin in which, near the middle of the arms where they are hinged, deep recesses and grooves running to the handles' ends receive "a loop, e, and a leg, f, of a metallic spring, S, preferably of wire, and greatly resembling the well-known sugar-tongs in its general form", held by strong metal pivots through the arms and the loop, so the spring can expand freely "without danger of tearing them away from each other". A notch across the jaws takes the line. This rung works out how hard the pin grips, then carves the arms, bends the spring and pins them, and hangs washing with it.