Sewing Machine Timeline

SEWING MACHINE TIMELINE

By Shamsi B. Manizani

1755

1790

1804

1814

1830

1832-1834

1846

1851

1889

1987

August 2015

Elias Howe was the inventor of the first American-patented sewing machine.

Elias Howe was born in Spencer, Massachusetts on July 9, 1819. After he lost his factory job in the Panic of 1837, Howe moved from Spencer to Boston, where he found work in a machinist's shop. It was there that Elias Howe began tinkering with the idea of inventing a mechanical sewing machine.

Elias Howe 5c Stamp

www.sewalot.com/elias_howe.htm

On May 30, 1804, John Duncan, a Glasgow manufacturer, was granted British patent 2,769 for “a new and improved method of tambouring, or raising flowers, figures or other ornaments upon muslins, lawns and other cottons, cloths, or stuffs.”

This machine made the chain stitch, using not one but many hooked needles that operated simultaneously. The needles, attached to a bar or carrier, were pushed through the vertically held fabric from the upper right side, which in this case was also the outer side. The fabric was stretched between two rollers set in an upright frame capable of sliding vertically in a second frame arranged to have longitudinal motion.

The principle developed by Duncan was used on embroidery machines, in a modified form, for many years. Of several early attempts, his was the first to realize any form of success. People used it !

First Sewing Machine

Before the invention of a usable machine for sewing or dress design, everything was sewn by hand. Most early attempts tried to replicate this hand sewing method and were generally a failure.

The first known attempt at a mechanical device for sewing was by the German born Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal, who was working in England. He was awarded British Patent No. 701 in 1755 for a double pointed needle with an eye at one end.

This needle was designed to be passed through the cloth by a pair of mechanical fingers and grasped on the other side by a second pair.

This method of recreating the hand sewing method suffered from the problem of the needle going right through the fabric, meaning the full length of the thread had to do so as well.

The first man known to have put a mechanical sewing device into commercial operation was a French tailor: Barthelemy Thimonnier who received a French patent in 1830.

The machine made a chain-stitch by means of a barbed or hooked needle. The fabric was fed through the stitching mechanism manually, and a regular rate of speed had to be maintained by the operator in order to produce stitches of equal length. A type of retractable thimble or presser foot was used to hold the fabric down as required.

By 1841 he had 80 machines stitching army clothing in a Paris shop. But a mob of tailors, fearing that the invention would rob them of a livelihood, broke into the shop and destroyed the machines. Thimonnier fled Paris, penniless. Four years later he had obtained new financial help, improved his machine to produce 200 stitches a minute, and organized the first French sewing-machine company.

He patented his lockstitch sewing machine on September 10, 1846 in New Hartford, Connecticut. At 250 stitches a minute, his lockstitch mechanism outstitched the output of five hand sewers with a reputation for speed.

For the next nine years Howe struggled, first to enlist interest in his machine, then to protect his patent from imitators who refused to pay Howe royalties for using his designs. His lockstitch mechanism was adopted by others who were developing sewing machines of their own.

The first electric machines were developed by Singer Sewing Co. and introduced in 1889.

At first these were standard machines with a motor strapped on the side. As more homes gained power, these became more popular and the motor was gradually introduced into the casing.

Over the past decades, hand-made sewing art changed to industrial factory-size and/or home-grown technology.

Different techniques were developed for faster and easier stitches upon different materials from silk to leather, to produce decoration on gloves or t-shirts or for making shoes. Sewing machines helped during wars to prepare uniforms and also uniforms for athletics in Olympics.

Nowadays you only need to touch the screen to select the colour and pattern you need. Who knows, in the future you may only need to upload your graphic files to the machine and it will provide your end product, with capability of improving it by sensing your material, considering graphical art in it,just like editing an image on the computer, in a noiseless, priceless and effortless way of its own. Good to use our brain and technology to serve us.

Future

As early as 1790, Thomas Saint, an Englishman, took out a patent on a machine for quilting, stitching and sewing, to make shoes and other articles. Saint's machine had some of the features of today good sewing machines. It had an overhanging arm and the block-like plate on which to place the material to be sewed. The machine had an awl, to punch a hole in the goods, A needle, blunt and notched at the end, pushed a thread through the hole to form a loop on the under side of the material. through this loop needle, on next descending, passed a second loop to form a chain or crochet stitch. there was also a feed to move the goods along under the needle, a continuous thread, and stitch tighteners.

It is probable that by the time Saint finished his machine and secured his patent, he was too much discouraged to go on with it. It may be, too, that to make a living he had to take up other work and before he got back to his invention, he became sick and died.

Whatever the reason, for almost 60 years his machine lay unknown in the English patent office.

Sometime between 1832 and 1834, Walter Hunt, perhaps best described as a Yankee mechanical genius produced at his shop in New York a machine that made a lockstitch.

The important element in the Hunt invention was an eye-pointed needle working in combination with a shuttle carrying a second thread.

Future inventors were thus no longer hampered by the erroneous idea that the sewing machine must imitate the human hands and fingers. Though Hunt’s machine stitched short, straight seams with speed and accuracy, it could not sew curved or angular work. Its stitching was not continuous, but had to be reset at the end of a short run.

Isaac Merritt Singer built the first commercially successful machine in 1851. Singer built the first sewing machine where the needle moved up and down rather than the side-to-side and the needle was powered by a foot treadle. Previous machines were all hand-cranked.

Israeli pioneers introduced the first vision controlled computerised sewing machine.

The addition of vision sense to sewing systems enhanced dramatically the accuracy of the multipart sewing process. This would correct or compensate in real time for any deflections, deformations, or dynamic movement of the sewn parts when compared to conventional sewing machines.

In 1814, Josef Madersperger, a tailor in Vienna, Austria, invented a sewing machine, which was illustrated and described in a 15-page pamphlet published about 1816.

Madersperger’s 1814 machine stitched straight or curving lines.

His second machine stitched small semicircles, as shown in the illustration, and also small circles, egg-shaped figures, and angles of various degrees.

Reference list

Askaroff, A 2015, A Brief History of the Sewing Machine, Sewalot, , viewed 26 August 2015, <http://www.sewalot.com/sewing_machine_history.htm>.

Bachman, F 2015, ELIAS HOWE AND THE INVENTION OF THE SEWING MACHINE, the Baldwin Project, viewed 25 August 2015, <http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=bachman&book=inventors&story=howe>.

Bellis, M 2015, Elias Howe, Famous Inventors, inventors.about.com, viewed 23 August 2015, <http://inventors.about.com/od/hstartinventors/a/Elias_Howe.htm>.

Bellis, M 2015, Stitches - The History of Sewing Machines, inventors.about.com, viewed 23 August 2015, <http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventors/a/sewing_machine.htm>.

Cooper, G 2010, The Invention of the Sewing Machine, Gutenberg, viewed 23 August 2015, < http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32677/32677-h/32677-h.htm>.

Forsdyke, G, A Brief History of the Sewing Machine, ISMACS International, viewed 23 August 2015, < http://ismacs.net/sewing_machine_history.html>.

Sew Review Team 2010, Computerised Sewing Machines with Touch LCD Screen, Sewing equipmentof the world review, viewed on 25 August 2015, <http://sewreview.com/blog/computerised-sewing-machines-with-touch-lcd-screen/>.

Isaac Singer formed I.M. Singer & Company with New York lawyer Edward C. Clark, following Singer's first lockstitch sewing machine patent. The Singer Sewing Machine is offered for sale all over the United States. Within two years Singer is the leading manufacturer and marketer of sewing machines in the United States.

The machine, acclaimed by the art experts, must therefore have been intended for embroidery stitching. Embroidery is going to become easier.