Inventions in the Century

CHAPTER XIX.

GARMENTS

"Man is a tool-using animal. Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools; with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if it were paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all… Man is a tool-using animal, of which truth, clothes are but one example." —Sartor Resartus.

In looking through the records of man's achievements to find the beginnings of inventions, we discover the glimmering of a change in the form of the immemorial needle, in an English patent granted to Charles F. Weisenthal, June 24, 1775. It was a needle with a centrally located eye, and with both ends pointed, designed for embroidery work by hand, and the object of the two points was to prevent the turning of the needle end for end after its passage through the cloth. But it was not until the 19th century that the idea was reduced to practice in sewing machines.

To Thomas Saint, a cabinet maker by trade, of Greenhills Rents, in the Parish of St. Sepulchre, Middlesex County, England, the world is indebted for the first clear conception of a sewing machine. Saint's attention was attracted to the slow way of sewing boots and shoes and other leather work, so he determined to improve the method. He took out a patent September 17, 1790, and although the germs of some of the leading parts of the modern sewing machine are there described, it does not appear that his patent was applied to practice. In fact, it slumbered in the archives of the British patent office for two generations, and after the leading sewing machines of the century had been invented and introduced, before it was rediscovered, and its contents appreciated in the light of more recent developments. Probably Saint's machine, if constructed in accordance with his plans, would not have done much good work, certainly not with woven cloth, as he proposed to employ a hooked needle to carry a loop through the material, which would have been snarled by the cloth threads; but from his drawings and description it is clearly established that he was first to conceive of a vertically reciprocating needle for forming a seam from a continuous thread drawn from a spool; a seam in which each loop is locked, or enchained with a subsequent loop, to form what is known as the chain, or single thread stitch; and a horizontal sliding plate, to support the material to be sewed, and by which the material was also moved sideways after each stitch.

May 30, 1804, John Duncan received an English patent for "tamboring on cloth." He proposed to employ a series of hooked needles attached in a straight line to a horizontal bar, which, when threaded, were first thrust forward and their hooked ends carried through the cloth, where each needle hook was supplied with a thread by a thread carrier. Then the motion of the bar was reversed, which drew the thread back through the cloth in the form of loops, and through the loops first formed, thus producing a chain stitch. The cloth was automatically shifted to correspond to the pattern to be produced, and thus was chain stitch embroidery first manufactured. From this point of time successful embroidery machines were made.

In 1807 another Englishman patented a machine for making a sort of rope matting, in which he describes two eye-pointed, thread-carrying, perforating needles, each held in a reciprocating needle bar, and designed to unite several small ropes laid parallel, by a reciprocating movement.

A German publication, the Kunst and Generbe Blatt, for 1817, and Karmarsch's History of Technology, made mention of a sewing machine invented by one Mr. Joseph Madersperger of Vienna, formerly from Kuefstein in the Tyrol, and for which he received royal letters patent in 1814. From these descriptions it appears Madersperger used a needle pointed at both ends, and the eye in the centre, invented many years before by Weisenthal, as above stated, which was moved vertically up and down, piercing alternately the top and bottom of the stuff, and which carried a short thread, enough to make about one hundred and thirty stitches, which machine was driven by a crank and handle, on which sewing was made of many different shaped forms, by slight changes, and which sewed with far greater accuracy and rapidity than hand work. The inventor was striving to simplify the machine, but to what extent it had been used or had been improved, or what finally became of it, does not appear. Yet it is a bit of evidence showing that Germany came next to England in the earlier ideas, conceptions of, and struggles after a sewing machine.

France then entered the list, and it was in 1830 that Barthelmy Thimonnier there produced and patented a sewing machine, which he continued to improve and to further patent in 1848 and in 1850 in France, England, and the United States. The Thimonnier resembled in some prominent respects the machine that had been described in the Saint patent, but unlike Saint's, it was reduced to successful practice, and possessed some points in common with more modern machines. These were the flat cloth plate, vertical post, overhung arm, vertically reciprocating needle, and continuous thread. The crochet or barbed needle was worked by a treadle, and upon pushing the needle down through the cloth, it there caught a thread from a carrier, carried the loop to and laid it upon the upper surface of the cloth. Again descending, it brought up another loop, enchained it with the one last made, making a chain stitch, consisting of a series of loops on the upper side.

Thimonnier made quite a large number of machines, constructed mostly of wood, and which were used to make army clothing at Paris. They were best adapted to work on leather and in embroidering. They were so far successful as to arouse the jealousy and fear of the workmen and working women, and, as in the case of Hargreaves, Jacquard, and others, a mob broke into his shop, destroyed his machines, ruined his business, and he died penniless in 1857.

In the meantime an English patent, No. 8948, of May 4, 1841, had been issued to Newton and Archbold for a machine for embroidering the backs of gloves, having an eye-pointed needle, worked by a vibrating lever, and adapted to carry a thread through the back of the glove, held on a frame – the frame and glove moving together after each stitch.

The germs of inventions often develop and fructify simultaneously in distant places, without, so far as any one can ascertain, the slightest mutual knowledge or co-operation on the part of the separate inventors. Between 1832 and 1834, while Thimonnier was in the midst of his early struggles in Paris, Walter Hunt was inventing a sewing machine in New York, which he completed at that time and on which he sewed one or two garments. But as it was experimental in form, and Hunt was full of other inventions and schemes, he put it aside, and it probably would never have been heard of had not Elias Howe of Massachusetts, ten years after Hunt had abandoned his invention, but without knowledge of Hunt's efforts, made the first practical successful sewing machine for commercial purposes the world had ever seen, obtained his patent, and made claims therein which covered not only his special form of improvements, but Hunt's old device as well.

Howe's patent was issued September 10, 1846. In that he claimed to be the first and original inventor of "A sewing machine, constructed and operated to form a seam, substantially as described."

Also "The combination of a needle and a shuttle, or equivalent, and holding surfaces, constructed and operating substantially as described."

Also "The combination of holding surfaces with a baster plate or equivalent, constructed and operating substantially as described."

Also "A grooved and eye-pointed needle, constructed and adapted for rapid machine sewing substantially as described."

When the machine commenced to be a practical success this patent was infringed, and when Howe sued upon it a few years after its issue, it woke up Hunt and all other alleged prior inventors; and all prior patents and publications the world over, relating to sewing machines, were raked up to defeat Howe's claims.

But the courts, after long deliberation, held that although, so far as Hunt was concerned he had without doubt made a machine in many respects like Howe's machine, that it had a curved, eye-pointed needle similar to Howe's operated by a vibrating arm and going through the cloth, a shuttle carrying the thread that passed through the loop made by the needle thread, thus making a lock stitch by drawing it up to one side of the cloth, and that this machine did, to a certain extent, sew, yet that it ended in an experiment, was laid aside, destroyed, and never perfected nor used so as to give to the public the knowledge and benefit of a completed invention, and was not therefore an anticipation in the eye of the law of Howe's completed, more successful and patented machine.

Public successful use is the fact in many cases which alone establishes the title of an inventor, when all other tests fail. And this is right in one sense, as the laws of all countries in respect to protection by patents for inventions are based upon the primary condition of benefit to society. This benefit is not derived from the inventor who hides his completed invention for years in his closet, or throws it on a dust heap. As to previous patents and publications, some were not published before Howe's inventions were made, and others were insufficient in showing substantially the same machine and mode of operation. And as to prior use abroad, it was not regarded under the law of his country as competent evidence.

Seldom have the lives of great inventors presented a more striking example of the vicissitudes, the despair, and the final triumphs of fortune, which are commonly their lot, than is shown in the case of Howe. A machinist with a wife and children to support, his health too feeble to earn hardly a scanty living, he watches his faithful wife ply her constant needle, and wonders why a machine cannot be made to do the work. The idea cannot be put aside, and with such poor aids as he can command he commences his task.

At last, amid the trials of bitter poverty, he brings his invention to that stage in which he induces a friend to advance some money, by the promise of a share in the future patent, and thereby gains a temporary home for his family and a garret for his workshop. Day after day and night after night he labours, and finally, in April, 1845, the rather crude machine is completed, and two woollen suits of clothing are sewed thereon, one for a friend, and one for himself.

Then came the effort to make more machines and place them on the market. People admired the machines as a curiosity, but none were induced to buy them or help him pecuniarily. Finally, in September, 1846, he obtained his patent, but by that time his best friends had become discouraged, and he was compelled to return with his family to his father's house in Cambridge, Mass. To earn his bread he sought and found employment on a railway locomotive. By some means his brother sold one of his machines to Mr. William Thomas, a corset maker of London, and Howe was induced to go there to make stays, and his machines. He took his wife and children with him. The arrangement made with his employer was not such as to enable him to keep his family there, and he soon sent them home.

Unable to sell his machines, he was soon reduced to want. He pawned his patent and his last machine, and procured money to return to New York, where he arrived penniless in 1849. He then learned that his wife was dying of consumption at Cambridge. He was compelled to wait until money could be sent him to pay his passage home, and reached there just before his wife's death.

He then learned that during his absence his patent and machine had attracted attention, that others had taken the matter up, added their improvements to his machines, and that many in various places were being made and sold which were infringements of his patent. A great demand for sewing machines had sprung up. He induced friends to again help him. Suits were commenced which, although bitterly fought for six years, were finally successful.

Now fortune turned her smiling face upon him. Medals and diplomas, the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and millions of money became his. When the great civil war broke out in 1861, he entered the army as a private soldier, and advanced the money to pay the regiment to which he belonged, when the Government paymaster had been long delayed. His life was saddened by the fact that his wife had not lived to share his fortune. He died in Brooklyn, New York, October 3, 1867, in the midst of life, riches, and honour, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight.

In referring to the early inventors of sewing machines in America who entered the field about the same time with Howe, mention should be made of J. J. Greenough and George Corliss, who had machines patented respectively in 1842 and 1843, for sewing leather, with double pointed needles; and the running stitch sewing machine used for basting, made and patented by B. W. Bean in 1843. About this time, both in England and America, machines had been devised for sewing lengths of calico and other cloths together, previous to bleaching, dyeing or printing. The edges of the cloths were first crimped or fluted and then sewed by a running stitch.

The decade of 1849-1859, immediately following the development of the Howe machine, was the greatest in the century for producing those successful sewing machines which were the foundation of the art, established a new industrial epoch, and converted Hood's "Song of the Shirt" into a lament commemorative of the miseries of a slavish but dying industry.

It was during that decade that, in the United States, Batcheller invented the perpetual feed for moving the cloth horizontally under and past the needle. In Howe's the cloth could be sewed but a certain distance at a time, and then the machine must be readjusted for a new length. Then Blodgett and Lerow imparted to the eye-pointed needle what is called the "dip motion," – the needle being made to descend completely through the material, then to rise a little to form a loop; the shuttle then entered the loop, the needle descended again a short distance, while the shuttle passed through the loop of the needle thread, and then the needle was raised above the cloth.

It was then that Allen B. Wilson invented the still more famous "four-motion feed" for feeding the cloth forward. He employed a bar having saw like teeth on one edge which projected up through a slotted plate and engaged the cloth. He then first moved the bar forward carrying the cloth; second, dropped the bar; third, moved it back under the plate; and fourth, raised it to its first position to again engage the cloth. These motions were so timed with the movement of the needle and so quickly done that the cloth was carried forward while the needle was raised, the passage and quick action of the needle was not interfered with, and the feeding and the sewing seem to be simultaneous. The intermittent grasp and feed of the cloth were hardly perceptible, and yet it permitted the cloth to be turned to make a curved seam. Wilson also invented the rotating hook which catches the loop of the upper thread, and drops a disk bobbin through it to form the stitch. The shuttle was thus dispensed with, and an entirely new departure was made in the art. These with other improvements made up the celebrated "Wheeler and Wilson" machine.

Now also appeared "the Singer," consisting chiefly of the invention of T. M. Singer. He improved the operation of the needle bar, devised a roughened feed wheel, as a substitute for Wilson's serrated bar, introduced a spring presser foot, alongside the needle, to hold the work down in proper position while permitting it to be moved forward or in any other direction. A "friction pad" was also placed between the cloth seam and the spool, to prevent the thread from kinking or twisting under the point of the descending needle. He was the first to give the shuttle an additional forward movement after it had once stopped, to draw the stitch tight, – such operation being taken while the feed moved the cloth in the reverse direction, and while, the needle completed its upward motion, so that the two threads were simultaneously drawn, and finally a spring guide upon the shuttle to control the slack of the thread, and prevent its catching by the needle.

By reason of these improvements it is thought by many that Singer was the first to furnish the people with a successful operating and practical sewing machine. At any rate, the world at last so highly appreciated his machines, that it lifted him from poverty to an estate which was valued at between eight and ten millions of dollars at the time of his death in 1875. Singer was also the first to invent the "ruffler," a machine for ruffling or gathering cloth, and a device which laid an embroidering thread upon the surface of the cloth under the needle thread.

The "Grover and Baker" another celebrated American machine, was invented by William O. Grover and William E. Baker in 1851. By certain changes they made in the thread carrier and connections, they were enabled to make a double looped stitch. This required more thread, but the stitch made was unexcelled in strength.

And so the work went on, from step to step, and from the completion of one machine after another, until when the Centennial Exhibition came to be held in Philadelphia in 1876, a fine array of excellent sewing machines was had, from the United States, principally, but also those of inventors and manufacturers in Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark.

Up to that time about twenty-two hundred patents had been granted in the United States, all of which, with the exception of a very few, were for inventions made within the preceding quarter of a century. And during the last quarter of the century about five thousand more United States patents have been issued for devices in this art. This number includes many, of course, to inventors of other countries. When it is remembered that these patents were issued only after an examination in each case as to its novelty, and although slight as may have been the changes or additions, yet substantially different they must have been in nearly all respects, it may to some extent be realized how great and incessant has been the exercise of invention in this useful class of machines.

On this point of the exercise of invention in sewing machines, as well as on some others growing out of the subject, Knight, writing in his Mechanical Dictionary, about twenty years ago, remarks: "If required to name the three subjects on which the most extraordinary versatility of invention has been expended, the answer would be without hesitation, the sewing machine, reaping machine and breech-loading firearm. Each of these has thousands of patents, and although each is the growth of the last forty years, it is only during the last twenty-five years that they have filled any notable place in the world. It was then only by a combination of talents that any of these three important inventions was enabled to achieve remarkable success. The sewing machine previous to 1851, made without the admirable division of labour which is a feature in all well conducted factories, was hard to make, and comparatively hard to run. The system of assembling, first introduced in the artillery service of France by General Gribeauval in 1765 and brought to proximate perfection by Colonel Colt in the manufacture of the revolver at Hartford, Connecticut, has economised material and time, improved the quality as well as cheapened the product. There is to-day, and in fact has been for some years, more actual invention in the special machines for making sewing machines than in the machines themselves. The assembling system, that is, making the component parts of an article in distinct pieces of pattern, so as to be interchangeable, and the putting them together, is the only system of order. How else should the Providence Tool Company execute their order for 600,000 rifles for the Turkish Government? How otherwise could the Champion Harvesting Machine Company of Springfield, Ohio, turn out an equipped machine every four minutes each working day of ten hours? Or, to draw the illustration from the subject in hand, how by any other than the nicest arrangement of detail can the Singer Sewing Machine Company make 6,000 machines per week at Elizabethport, New Jersey?"