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Abstract
The industrialization of the cloth production into large factories came in the eighteenth century. However, making cloth into clothes remained a hand operation until the mid-nineteenth century. The invention of the sewing machine evolved from significant technical innovation by many workers, producing stitches that could not be made by hand. Alongside innovation in business practices such as the Patent Combination, Hire Purchase and Part Exchange, the sewing machine industry inaugurated major advances in ‘interchangeable manufacture’. To produce the millions of cheap machines, each containing many small precision parts, required its own machine tool revolution.
Notes
1 Thomas Saint’s Patent (17 July 1790) No. 1764 was for a sewing machine for making shoes; boots; etc. Newton Wilson tried to make a machine from the patent drawings in the 1870s. He had to make modifications which led him to believe that Saint did not make a working sewing machine.
2 Basic details of the sewing machines of Krems and Madersperger are given in Grace Rogers Cooper; The Sewing Machine: Its Invention and Development (Smithsonian Institution Press; Washington; DC; 1968/76); pp. 7–8.
3 Thimonnier (1793–1857) took out his first patent in 1830. His machine made a tambour embroidery stitch using a ‘crochet’ hook needle and had no feed mechanism. After his factory was looted in 1830 Thimonnier contented himself by making individual machines to order. His machines can be seen in the London Sewing Machine Museum and in the Thimonnier Museum near Lyon; France. Jean-Marie Magnin patented an improved version in England in 1848. See Marcel Doyen; Thimonnier; Inventeur de la Machine à Coudre (Lyon; ND; c. 1970).
4 Walter Hunt (1796–1860) seems to have had no occupation other than that of inventor. He took out his first patent; of 26; in 1826 and followed it by patents for a fountain pen; a safety pin etc. Some of his ideas; including the lockstitch and the eye-pointed needle he sold without patenting; or lost interest in them.
5 Elias Howe Jnr (1819–67). Many biographies of Elias Howe have been written; ranging from the well researched to the fanciful. Basic information is given in Cooper. Early biographies include James Parton; ‘The History of the Sewing Machine’; The Atlantic Monthly; 19 (1867); 527–44; and Nahum Salamon; The History of the Sewing Machine (London; 1863).
6 Elias Howe’s US Patent No. 4750 of 10 September 1846.
7 William Frederick Thomas registered Howe’s patent in England as ‘a communication’ on 1 December 1846 as English Patent No. 11464.
8 Grover’s US Patent No. 7931 of 11 February 1851.
9 Allen Benjamin Wilson (1824–88). Basic biographical details are given in Cooper The important US patents are: for the rotary hook lock stitch; No. 8296 of 12 August 1851; incorporating a stationary bobbin No. 9041 15 June 1852; English Patent No. 251 of 6 October 1852. Wilson’s four-motion feed US patent was No. 12116 of 19 December 1854.
10 Isaac Merritt Singer (1811–75). A good biography of Singer and his involvement with the sewing machine is Ruth Brandon; Singer and the Sewing Machine (London: Barrie and Jenkins; 1977).
11 Grover’s US Patent No. 14956 of 27 May 1856.
12 The ‘Sewing-Machine Combination’ was proposed by Potter to put an end to endless litigation since no one company owned all the patents necessary to build a successful machine. The important patents lodged with the Combination were:
| 1. | The eye-pointed needle used with a shuttle to form the lockstitch (held by Elias Howe) | ||||
| 2. | The four-motion feed mechanism (held by the Wheeler & Wilson company) | ||||
| 3. | The needle moving vertically above a horizontal cloth-plate; the continuous belt or wheel feed; the yielding presser foot; the heart-shaped cam to drive the needle bar (all held by the Singer company) | ||||
| 4. | Various patents held by the Grover & Baker company. | ||||
The consent of all four members was required for each licence and even member companies were required to have a licence. The fee was initially $15 per machine. The last Combination patent; after two extensions; ran out in 1877.
Some useful statistical information on the Combination appears in the chapter by Frederick Bourne in N. Depew Chaunay; One Hundred Years of American Commerce (1895).
13 David A. Hounshell; From the American System to Mass Production; 1800–1932 (Johns Hopkins University Press; 1984).
14 Obituary to Allen B. Wilson in The Sewing Machine Advance; 15 September 1879.
15 James E. A. Gibbs patent for his rotary hook chain stitch was No. 17427 on 2 June 1857; English Patent No. 1971 of 15 July 1857.
16 Hounshell; pp. 78–79.
17 Data from Frederick Bourne in Chaunay and others.
18 Hounshell; pp. 78–79.
19 Early overseaming machines include the range by George Rehfuss for the American Button Hole Overseaming & Sewing Machine Co. of Philadelphia; PA.
20 The Wheeler & Wilson buttonhole machine was patented by the House brothers (US Patents 36932 of 11 November 1862 and 56224 of 10 July 1866).
21 Joseph Wickham Roe; English and American Tool Builders (Yale University Press; 1916) and Hounshell.
22 Hounshell; p. 92ff.
23 Salamon; pp. 60–98. Salamon was a patent agent and; at that time; the agent/manager for the Howe Sewing Machine company in London.
24 Practical Mechanic’s Journal; 1 April 1858; p. 1.
25 Quoted in Peter Wilhelm; Old French Sewing Machines (Göttingen; c. 2000).
26 Ibid.
27 John Strang; The Sewing Machine in Glasgow and its Effects on Production; Prices; and Wages; a lecture read before Section F of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Leeds; 25 September 1858.
28 Edward H. Knight; The Practical Dictionary of Mechanics (Cambridge; MA: H. O. Houghton & Co.; 1880s).