Large Lot -- "Ballou" Butterfly Clutch Backs Military Pins - Army Navy USMC -NOS

Description

Large Lot
New Old Stock
-- "Ballou"  --All are marked
Most are brass, small lot of silver-tone included.
Butterfly Clutch Backs Military Pins
Info about Ballou clutches:
The invention of the Ballou clutch occurred just at the right moment. It was make of light weight stamped brass at a time the military was interested in conserving brass. The Ballou Company produced 300 million clutches during the war and earned an Army-Navy Efficiency Award as a result. Clutches were used by all services and on many different categories of insignia. They were used on officer and enlisted lapel insignia, wing badges, other qualification badges, and ribbon bars. During the Second World War rank insignia and distinctive insignia continued to be mostly of pin-back or screw back construction but after the war Ballou clutches also because common place on them. There is an issue of the National Geographic Magazine dated December 4, 1944 that discusses insignia and is familiar to most collectors. This article includes a photograph of a female worker assembling ribbon bars using Ballou clutches on page 55. Ballou continued to improve its clutch and got a new patent, Number 2551196, on July 29,1948. The improved clutch has eight cleats in four groups of two on the surface to better grip the material. In time Ballou's various patents expired and other companies began producing clutches similar to Ballou's. Although Ballou was a jeweler, the company did not seem to be a major producer of insignia, as most of the marked insignia using Ballou clutches were manufactured by other companies. The W.R. Cobb Company acquired the B.A Ballou company in 2009 and it still exists today as a subsidiary but is no longer a family run business.