On August 2, 1791, Samuel Briggs and his son, Samuel Briggs, Jr. became the first father-son duo to receive a joint U.S. patent (No. X00013) on a nail making machine. (Most of the patents prior to 1836 were lost in the December 1836 fire, so little is known about the Briggs’ patent, and not even an image survives).

Other inventors had been working on improving the manufacture of nails. In 1775 Jeremiah Wilkinson, a Cumberland, Rhode Island, inventor, developed a nail cutting process utilizing a flat sheet of cold iron. in 1786, Ezekiel Reed invented and patented a nail making machine that was the forerunner of modem nail-making machines. Nail manufacture continued to be improved incrementally until the cut nail process was perfected.