THE SEWING-MACHINE.
Thomas Saint--Thimonnier--Hunt--Elias Howe--Wilson--Morey--Singer.
Although the sewing-machine has not put an end to the slavery of the
needle, and although 'The Song of the Shirt' may be heard to the
accompaniment of its click and whirr, just as it was to the 'stitch,
stitch' of Tom Hood's time, yet has it unquestionably come as a boon and
a blessing to man--and woman. Its name now is legion, and it has had so
many inventors and improvers that the present generation is fast losing
sight of its original benefactors. Indeed, we take the sewing-machine
to-day as an accomplished fact so familiar as to be commonplace. And yet
that fact is a product of as moving a history as any in the story of
human invention.
It is the growth of the last half-century, prior to which the real
sewing-machine was the heavy-eyed, if not tireless, needlewoman, whose
flying fingers seemed ever in vain pursuit of the flying hours.
Needlework is as old as human history, for we may see the beginnings of
it in the aprons of fig-leaves which Mother Eve sewed. What instrument
she used we know not, but we do know from Moses that needles were in use
when the tabernacle was built. Yet, strange to say, it was not until
the middle of last century that any one tried to supersede manual labour
in the matter of stitching. It is said that a German tailor, named
Charles Frederick Weisenthal, was the first to attempt it, but for
hand-embroidery only--with a double-pointed needle, eyed in the middle.
This was in 1755, and fifty years later, one John Duncan, a Glasgow
machinist, worked out Weisenthal's idea into a genuine embroidering
machine, which really held the germ of the idea of the 'loop-stitch.'
But neither of these was a sewing-machine, and before Duncan's invention
some one else had been seized with another idea.
This was a London cabinetmaker called Thomas Saint, who in or about 1790
took out a patent for a machine for sewing leather, or rather for
'quilting, stitching, and making shoes, boots, spatterdashes, clogs, and
other articles.' This patent, unfortunately, was taken out along with
other inventions in connection with leather, and it was quite by
accident that, some eighty years later, the specification of it was
discovered by one who had made for himself a name in connection with
sewing-machines. Even the Patent Office did not seem to have known of
its existence, yet now it is clear enough that Thomas Saint's
leather-sewing-machine of 1790 was the first genuine sewing-machine ever
constructed, and that it was on what is now known as the 'chain-stitch'
principle. Rude as it was, it is declared by experts to have anticipated
most of the ingenious ideas of half a century of successive inventors,
not one of whom, however, could in all human probability have as much as
heard of Saint's machine. This is not the least curious incident in the
history of the sewing-machine.
In Saint's machine the features are--the overhanging arm, which is the
characteristic of many modern machines; the perpendicular action of the
Singer machine; the eye-pointed needle of the Howe machine; the
pressure surfaces peculiar to the Howe machine; and a 'feed' system
equal to that of the most modern inventions. Whether Saint's machine was
ever worked in a practical workshop or not, it was unquestionably a
practicable machine, constructed by one who knew pretty well what he was
about, and what he wanted to achieve.
Now note the date of Thomas Saint's patent (1790), and next note the
date of the invention of Barthelmy Thimonnier, of St Etienne, who is
claimed in France as the inventor of the sewing-machine. In 1830,
Thimonnier constructed a machine, principally of wood, with an
arrangement of barbed needles, for stitching gloves, and in the
following year he began business in Paris, with a partner, as an army
clothier. The firm of Thimonnier, Petit, & Co., however, did not thrive,
because the workpeople thought they saw in the principal's machine an
instrument destined to ruin them; much as the Luddites viewed
steam-machinery in the cotton districts of England. An idea of that sort
rapidly germinates heat, and Thimonnier's workshop was one day invaded
by an angry mob, who smashed all the machines, and compelled the
inventor to seek safety in flight. Poor Thimonnier was absent from Paris
for three years, but in 1834 returned with another and more perfect
machine. This was so coldly received, both by employers and workmen in
the tailoring trade, that he left the capital, and, journeying through
France with his machine, paid his way by exhibiting it in the towns and
villages as a curiosity. After a few years, however, Thimonnier fell in
with a capitalist who believed in him and his machine, and was willing
to stake money on both. A partnership was entered into for the
manufacture and sale of the machine, and all promised well for the new
firm, when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, stopped the business, and
ruined both the inventor and the capitalist. Thimonnier died in 1857,
in a poorhouse, of a broken heart.
This French machine was also on the chain-stitch principle, but it was
forty years later than Saint's. In between the two came, about 1832, one
Walter Hunt, of New York, who is said to have constructed a
sewing-machine with the lock-stitch movement. Some uncertainty surrounds
this claim, and Elias Howe is the person usually credited with this
important, indeed invaluable invention. Whether Howe had ever seen
Hunt's machine, we know not; but Hunt's machine was never patented,
seems never to have come into practical working, and is, indeed, said to
have been unworkable. There is, besides, in the Polytechnic at Vienna,
the model of a machine, dated 1814, constructed by one Joseph
Madersberg, a tailor of the Tyrol, which embodies the lock-stitch
idea--working with two threads. But this also was unworkable, and Elias
Howe has the credit of having produced the first really practical
lock-stitch sewing-machine.
His was a life of vicissitude and of ultimate triumph, both in fame and
fortune. He was born at a small place in Massachusetts in 1819, and as a
youth went to Boston, there to work as a mechanic. While there, and when
about twenty-two years old, the idea occurred to him at his work of
passing a thread through cloth and securing it on the other side by
another thread. Here we perceive the germ of the lock-stitch--the two
threads. Howe began to experiment with a number of bent wires in lieu of
needles, but he lacked the means to put his great idea to a thorough
practical test. Thus it slumbered for three years, when he went to board
and lodge with an old schoolfellow named Fisher, who, after a while,
agreed to advance Howe one hundred pounds in return for a half share in
the invention should it prove a success. Thus aided, in 1845 Howe
completed his first machine, and actually made himself a suit of
clothes with it; and this would be just about the time of Thimonnier's
temporary prosperity in alliance with the capitalist, Mogrini.
Feeling sure of his ground, Howe took bold steps to 'boom' his
invention. He challenged five of the most expert sewers in a great
Boston clothing factory to a sewing match. Each of them was to sew a
certain strip of cloth, and Howe undertook to sew five strips, torn in
halves, before each man had completed his one strip. The arrangements
completed, the match began, and to the wonder of everybody, Howe
finished his five seams before the others were half done with one seam.
But murmurs instead of cheers succeeded the victory. He was angrily
reproached for trying to take the bread out of the mouth of the honest
working-man, and a cry was raised among the workers (as it has been
heard time and again in the history of industrial development) to smash
the machine. Howe, indeed, had much difficulty in escaping from the
angry mob, with his precious machine under his arm.
In Howe's experience we thus see one parallel with Thimonnier's; but
there was another. The American was quite as poor and resourceless as
the Frenchman, and the next step in Howe's career was that he went on
tour to the country fairs to exhibit his machine for a trifling fee, in
order to keep body and soul together. People went in flocks to see the
thing as a clever toy, but no one would 'take hold' of it as a practical
machine. And so, in despair of doing any good with it in America, Elias
Howe, in 1846, sent his brother to England to see if a market could not
be found for the invention there. The brother succeeded in making terms
with one William Thomas, staymaker, in Cheapside, London, and he sent
for Elias to come over.
The price to be paid by Thomas for the patent was two hundred and fifty
pounds, but Howe was to make certain alterations in it so as to adapt
it to the special requirements of the purchaser. While engaged in
perfecting the machine, he was to receive wages at the rate of three
pounds per week, and this wage he seems to have received for nearly two
years. But he failed to achieve what Thomas wanted, and Thomas, after
spending a good deal of money over the experiments, abandoned the thing
altogether. Howe was thus astrand again, and he returned to America as
poor as ever, leaving his machine behind him in pawn for advances to pay
his passage home. And yet there were 'millions in it.'
This was in the year 1849, and just about the time when Howe was
returning to America, another American, named Bostwich, was sending over
to England a machine which he had invented for imitating hand-stitching,
by means of cog-wheels and a bent needle. And a year or two after Howe's
return, one Charles Morey, of Manchester, attempted to carry out the
same stitch on a somewhat different plan, but failed to find sufficient
pecuniary support. Indeed, poor Morey had a tragic end, for, taking his
machine to Paris in the hope of finding a purchaser there, he incurred
some debt which he could not pay, and was clapped into the Mazas prison.
While there, he inadvertently broke the rules, and was shot by the guard
for failing to reply to a challenge which he did not understand.
When Howe got back to the United States, he found a number of ingenious
persons engaged in producing or experimenting in sewing-machines, and
some of them were trenching on his own patent rights. He raised enough
money, somehow, to redeem his pawned machine in England, and then raised
actions against all who were infringing it. The litigation was
tremendous both in duration and expense, but it ended in the victory of
Elias Howe, to whom, by the finding of the court, the other patentees
were found liable for royalty. It is said that Howe, who as we have seen
left London in debt, received, before his patent expired in 1867,
upwards of two million dollars in royalties alone.
But ingenious men were now busy in both hemispheres in perfecting what,
up till about fifty years ago, was regarded as nothing better than a
clever toy. Besides Morey, the Manchester man we have mentioned, a
Huddersfield machinist, named Drake, brought out a machine to work with
a shuttle. About the same time, or a little later, a young Nottingham
man, named John Fisher, constructed a machine with a sort of lock-stitch
movement, which he afterwards adapted to a double loop-stitch. But
Fisher's machine was intended rather for embroidering than for plain
sewing.
Passing over some minor attempts, the next great development was that of
Allen Wilson, who, without having heard either of Howe's or of any other
machine, constructed one in 1849, the design of which, he said, he had
been meditating for two years. His first machine had original features,
however much it may have been anticipated in principle by Howe's patent.
In Wilson's second design, a rotary hook was substituted for a
two-pointed shuttle, and by other improvements he achieved a greater
speed than had been attained by other inventors. Later still, he added
the 'four-motion feed,' which is adopted on most of the machines now in
general use.
This idea was an elaboration of a principle which seems to have first
occurred to the unfortunate Morey. In Morey's machine there was a
horizontal bar with short teeth, which caught the fabric and dragged it
forward as the stitches were completed. It took nearly thirty years,
however, to evolve the perfect 'feed' motion out of Morey's first crude
germ.
While Wilson was working away, perfecting his now famous machine, an
observing and thoughtful young millwright was employed in a New York
factory. One day a sewing-machine was sent in for repairs, and after
examining its mechanism, this young man, whose name was Isaac Singer,
confidently expressed his belief that he could make a better one. He did
not propose either to appropriate or abandon the principle, but to
improve upon it. Instead of a curved needle, as in Howe's and Wilson's
machines, he adopted a straight one, and gave it a perpendicular instead
of a curvular motion. And for propelling the fabric he introduced a
wheel, instead of the toothed bar of the Morey design.
It need hardly be said that the Singer machine is now one of the most
widely known, and is turned out in countless numbers in enormous
factories on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not so well known,
perhaps, that Singer, who was a humble millwright in 1850, and who died
in 1875, left an estate valued at three millions sterling--all amassed
in less than twenty-five years!
The machines of Howe, Wilson, and Singer were on the lock-stitch
principle, and the next novelty was the invention of Grover and Baker,
who brought out a machine working with two needles and two continuous
threads. After this came the Gibbs machine, the story of which may be
briefly told.
About the year 1855, James G. Gibbs heard of the Grover and Baker
machine, and having a turn for mechanics, began to ponder over how the
action described was produced. He got an illustration, but could make
nothing of it, and not for a year did he obtain sight of a Singer
machine at work. As in the case of Singer with Wilson's machine, so
Gibbs thought he could improve on Singer's, and turn out one less
ponderous and complicated. He set to work, and in a very short time took
out a patent for a new lock-stitch machine. But he was not satisfied
with this, and experimented away, with an idea of making a chain-stitch
by means of a revolving looper. This idea he eventually put into
practical form, and took out a patent for the first chain-stitch
sewing-machine.
Since the days of Elias Howe, the number of patents taken out for
sewing-machines has been legion--certainly not less than one
thousand--and probably no labour-saving appliance has received more
attention at the hands both of inventors and of the general public.
There is scarcely a household in the land now, however humble, without a
sewing-machine of some sort, and in factories and warehouses they are to
be numbered by the thousand. Some machinists have directed their
ingenuity to the reduction of wear and tear, others to the reduction of
noise, others to acceleration of speed, others to appliances for
supplying the machine in a variety of ways, others for adapting it to
various complicated processes of stitching and embroidering. Some users
prefer the lock-stitch, and some the chain-stitch principle, and each
system has its peculiar advantages according to the character of the
work to be sewn.
A recent development is a combination of both principles in one machine.
Mr Edward Kohler patented a machine which will produce either a
lock-stitch or a chain-stitch, as may be desired, and an embroidery
stitch as well. By a very ingenious contrivance the machinery is altered
by the simple movement of a button, and (when the chain-stitch is
required) the taking out of the bobbin from the shuttle. If the
embroidery stitch is wanted, the button is turned without removing the
bobbin, and the lock-stitch and chain-stitch are combined in one new
stitch, with which very elaborate effects can be produced. It is said
that the Kohler principle can be easily adapted to all, or most,
existing machines.
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