08/18/2026
Carol “Smokey” Nightingale was more than a tattooer, he was an inventor, machine builder, and one of the more eccentric characters of 20th-century tattooing.
A Canadian by birth, Nightingale began tattooing professionally in the 1950s and eventually established himself in Washington, D.C., where he became known as “The Man with the Golden Needle.” He preferred the term dermographics for his work and was known for drawing his own designs rather than relying solely on mass-produced flash. By 1980, The Washington Post reported that he had created more than 200 copyrighted tattoo designs. (Tattoo Archive)
Nightingale was just as interested in the mechanics behind tattooing as he was in the artwork. In 1978 he filed a U.S. patent for his own highly adjustable electromagnetic tattoo machine, which was granted as U.S. Patent 4,159,659 on July 3, 1979. (Google Patents) The handmade “Nightingale’s Coil Winder 1985” pictured here is another look at that mechanical side of the craft. Coil winders were used by tattooers and machine builders to tightly and consistently wrap insulated copper wire around iron cores, creating the electromagnets that drive a traditional coil tattoo machine. Before coils became something easily ordered off a shelf, winding and experimenting with your own coils was part of understanding—and tuning—the machine itself.
Alongside the winder is a sheet of Nightingale’s hand-painted tattoo illustrations, a reminder that the old-school tattooer often had to be artist, mechanic, inventor, and craftsman all at once.
Sources: Tattoo Archive, Carol “Smokey” Nightingale; The Washington Post, “Original Tattoo Artist: Times Changing,” Nov. 8, 1980; U.S. Patent No. 4,159,659 / Google Patents.
