Sewing Machine
The sewing machine stitches materials together by using a needle and thread. It is important both as a home and an industrial appliance. Because it made possible the mass manufacture of reasonably priced ready-made clothing, the sewing machine relieved women of one of their most demanding, time-consuming domestic chores--manually sewing all of the family's clothing.
The first sewing machine patent was issued in 1790 to Thomas Saint, an English cabinetmaker. This machine used a notched needle, awl, and chain stitch to sew leather and heavy canvas, but the device was not practical. Various inventors made attempts in the early 1800s to develop a sewing machine focused on duplicating the motions of hand sewing. A machine patented in England in 1807 by Edward and William Chapman made the first crucial innovation: it used an "eye-pointed" needle, a needle with the eye at the point rather than at the top.
One of the first successful sewing machines was developed in 1829 by Barthelémy Thimmonier (1793-1859), a French tailor. This machine, patented in 1830, used a hooked needle to produce a chain stitch. By 1841 Thimmonier had eighty machines at work turning out uniforms for the French army. Infuriated at Thimmonier's threat to their livelihood, an angry mob led by Parisian tailors stormed Thimmonier's factory, destroyed the machines, and nearly killing the inventor. Thimmonier fled for his life and later died in poverty.
An improvement over Thimmonier's design and the first successful sewing machine made in the United States was the creation of Walter Hunt, a gifted and prolific New York inventor. Hunt's 1834 machine used an eye-pointed needle and a second thread that produced a lock stitch--a great improvement over the chain stitch, which would completely unravel if a thread were pulled in the wrong direction. Hunt, however, never applied for a patent and showed no further interest in his design.
The first patented and practical American sewing machine was designed in 1846 by Elias Howe. Howe, a Boston, Massachusetts machine-shop employee struggling to provide for a growing family, was supported financially by a friend while he developed his machine. Like Hunt's invention, it used an eye-pointed needle with a bobbin for a second thread to make a lock stitch. Although Howe's machine operated successfully, it did not sell.
Howe went to England in 1847 to market his invention but instead practically gave away his rights to it. Howe's design was being widely copied by other American manufacturers, as the penniless Howe discovered when he returned from England in 1849. Howe gathered financial backers and sued a number of sewing machine companies for patent infringement, chief among them the I.M. Singer Company.
By 1854 these lawsuits had been successfully settled or decided in Howe's favor. The proliferation of sewing machine patents by now threatened to hobble all manufacturers, since a practical, successful machine needed to incorporate a number of competing patented features. In 1856, four manufacturers created a "combination," or patent pool, where rights to the pooled patents could be purchased. Howe received a royalty on each sewing machine sold.
The most important advances in sewing machine design during the 1850s were made by Allen B. Wilson (1824-1888) and Isaac Singer. Wilson, an American cabinetmaker, invented both a rotary hook shuttle (1851) and four-motion feed (1854), features that are still used today. Singer, another Boston machine-shop worker, had entered into the sewing machine industry in 1850 when a machine was brought into his shop for repairs. Singer developed a new design that corrected the drawbacks of Howe's machine, introducing vertical (rather than horizontal) movement of the needle, a yielding presser foot, a foot treadle to replace the hand crank, and--most importantly--a continuous feed mechanism (the patent for which Singer purchased from its inventor, John Bachelder).
Singer's other, equally important, contribution to the sewing machine industry was his company's masterful use of merchandising, which brought the machine into thousands of households around the world. Singer also introduced such pioneering sales tactics as installment payments, trade-ins, and a repair service. Soon, Singer was selling one thousand machines a week.
The sewing machine revolutionized the manufacture of clothing by creating the new industry of ready-made clothes, and it improved innumerable other industries, including boot and shoe making, carpeting, bookbinding, hosiery, and upholstery. Today, specialized sewing machines serve a host of industrial functions. Sergers, for example, sew a seam, trim it back, and wrap thread around the raw edge all in one step to create a durable, finished seam commonly seen in factory-produced garments.
Singer introduced the first electric sewing machine for the home in 1889. The first zigzag (swing-needle) machine was used industrially before 1900 but home models were not available in America until after World War II. Contemporary sewing machines have seen tremendous advances courtesy of the computer. A microprocessor automatically sets the machine parameters, adjusting needle motion and stitch length for various stitch types, and thread tension and presser foot pressure for a variety of fabrics. Computerized stepping motors also improve stitch accuracy and uniformity. Top-of-the-line machines can even be hooked up to home computers to automatically produce complicated embroidery from patterns that can be downloaded off of the Internet.
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