New Technologies.

The most significant changes in the way Americans dressed during the middle decades of the nineteenth century came about because of improvements in technology. Though various types of sewing machines had been invented during the 1830s and 1840s, the first practical, workable machine for the home sewer was invented by Isaac Merrit Singer in 1850. By the middle of that decade sewing machines were selling at the rate of one hundred thousand per year. In 1871 manufacturers made seven times that number. While a woman might have spent days sewing a man's shirt by hand, she could make one in an afternoon with her sewing machine. New technologies also changed textile production, making it possible for manufacturers to mass-produce printed cottons that were both cheap and pretty. Aniline dyes, invented in the 1850s, permitted silks and wools to be dyed in astonishingly bright, sharp colors...