JF Ptak Science Books Post #148
Here we have two glorious, lovely examples of craftsmanship of simple things. The first is The Republic Steel Corporation (Chicago) manufacturer’s catalog for their production of nails and other wire goods. It is about fifty pages long, and a third or so of it is devoted to the history of nail and nail-making as well as the history of the company. The rest is all about the product. And mostly about nails. All sorts. It is just fantastic! I must say in all the years of my own nail consumption I didn’t know that there were so many different sorts of nail POINTS (diamond, blunt, chisel, needle, duck bill, side, and so on) ion addition to the various widths and lengths and special uses. The points just never entered into the equation to me, but, of course, it is very important.
And speaking of special uses, there are a number of interesting specified nails in this catalog that, I think, are long gone from modern hardware store shelves, as the needs they addressed are gone: beer case strap nails (oh my god I love the sound of that) AND beer case hinge/lock/latch nails AND beer case cleat nails, basket nails, shade roller pins, pole marking and dating (!) nails, barbed berry box nails, and egg case fasteners are among what I imagine to be extinct nails.
Then there’s the beautifully designed Southington Hardware Manufacturing Company’s screw catalog, called, wonderfully, Screws, (Wood, Sheet Metal, Phillips Head, Slotted Head), catalog 41 (with prices) for 1935. There’s page after page (actually, forty-five pages) of very detailed specifications (dimensions of heads, diameter, thread and tolerance, each description accompanied by two (or more) engineering drawings of the screw itself.
Now THIS is a way to describe a product.
This is followed up by a concise, nine-page (3,500 word) pamphlet published by the Atlas Tack Company (Varick St, NYC) on the history of shoe tacks and nails, bound, I’m happy to say, with metallic eyelets. It contains pretty much all you need to know on the history of shoe tacks, and I’m 100% behind the publication of odd-obscure histories such as this. (I own perhaps a hundred “different” histories like this, including the massive non-classic “The History of Refrigerated Nuts”.)
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