A brass thumbtack

A thumbtack (known as a pushpin or a drawing-pin in the UK, India, Australia and New Zealand) is a short nail or pin with a large, slightly rounded head made of metal which is used to fasten documents to a background for public display and which can easily be inserted or removed by hand. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located India, officially the Republic of India (भारत गणराज्य inc-Latn Bhārat Gaṇarājya; see also other Indian languages) is a country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. New Zealand is an Island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island In Engineering, Woodworking and Construction, a nail is a pin -shaped sharp object of hard Metal, typically Steel,

Types of thumbtack

A map pin or push pin

The most common thumbtacks are made by attaching a brass stem to a flat brass head. Brass is any Alloy of Copper and Zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties Some have coloured plastic tops, to make them more attractive. Plastic is the general common term for a wide range of synthetic or semisynthetic organic solid materials suitable for the manufacture of industrial products

Map pins, or push pins, are also a type of thumbtack. Map pins have a handle-like cover of plastic, which brings the pin out of the wall, allowing quick and easy removal from surfaces. Some other map pins have a round 1mm head to allow for easy removal. Both types come in a variety of colors. Map pins are safer than flat-headed thumbtacks when dropped on the ground or discarded on a surface, since they will not normally rest with the point upward.

History

Thumbtacks of 1930s

Thumbtacks with coloured tops

The map pin was invented by Edwin Moore around 1900, the year in which he founded the Moore Push-Pin Company [1].

As far as is currently known, the thumbtack was invented by the clockmaker Johann Kirsten in the year 1903 in the town of Lychen in Uckermark, Germany [2]. Lychen (ˈlyːçən is a town in the Uckermark district in Brandenburg, Germany. The Uckermark is a historical region in northeastern Germany. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. He sold the rights to the invention to Otto Lindstedt, a businessman, who received a patent for the thumbtack on 8th January 1904. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an Lindstedt became a wealthy man while Kirsten, the clockmaker, remained in poverty.

Other sources ascribe the invention of the thumbtack to Austrian factory owner Heinrich Sachs in 1888 [3]. Austria (Österreich ( officially the Republic of Austria (Republik Österreich

Physics

A thumbtack can be inserted by hand because of the large area of its head relative to the area of its point. Area is a Quantity expressing the two- Dimensional size of a defined part of a Surface, typically a region bounded by a closed Curve. When a relatively low pressure is applied across the large head of a thumbtack, a high pressure will be applied by the tip of the thumbtack. Pressure (symbol 'p' is the force per unit Area applied to an object in a direction perpendicular to the surface The low pressure on the head means the thumbtack will not pierce a person's finger. The high pressure at the tip allows it to pierce the surface to which the document is being fastened.

The thumb tack has a flat head in order to place the thumb, where as the drawing pin has a longer head which is gripped between two fingers to place.

Facts

• A thumbtack can be made to spin on its tip like a spinning top by holding the pin (with head facing up) between thumb and forefinger and rapidly spinning and releasing it in one fluid motion. A top, or spinning top, is a Toy that can be spun on an axis balancing on a point

• Push pins can be loaded directly into the breech of a Tippmann 98 Custom paintball gun and fired as projectiles. The Tippmann 98 Custom, also called the 98C, 98 Custom and simply the 98 is an open-bolt inline blowback marker designed especially for the sport A flying pushpin rapidly loses stability after a few feet due to poor aerodynamics.

• Thumbtacks are used as a weapon in professional wrestling. " Foreign object " is a Professional wrestling term for an object introduced into the match