an American inventor from Poughkeepsie, New York. Samuel Slocum traveled to England. While in England, he invented a machine for the production of pins. These pins later became flat head pins (similar to staples). A short time later he moved back to the United States, to Poughkeepsie, NY and formed a pin manufacturing company, Slocum and Jillson, which invented a "Machine for Sticking Pins into Paper", which is often believed to be the first stapler. In fact, this patent from September 30, 1841, Patent #2275, is for a device used for packaging pins.
