Historically many companies in the textile field produced educational/promotional material about how their products were made. The practice was popular in the first half of the 20th century but began to loose favor after WWII as manufacturing processes became more sophistocated and patented processes and trade secrets in manufacturing became more common. Targeted audiences for this educational/promotional material were Home Economics teachers and their classes and salesmen and their clients. Boye® made this educational card showing how needles are made sometime after 1921 when they started producing needles.
You can read most of the information directly off of the card but I have a few close up photos of the steps that form the eye of the needle. Excuse the rust in some of the photos – the card is old!
Step 5 impression of eyes for two needles
Step 6 eyes punched through
Step 7 broken in two
Step 8 ground
