March 27, 2013 • 39 mins
The mechanization of stitching happened by way a series of inventions, several of which finally came together. Though Elias Howe is often credited with inventing the sewing machine, his invention had more to do with the combination of existing ideas.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I am Tracy V. Wilson, and
I'm excited because we're talking about one of my favorite
things today. It's an invention that I love and owe
(00:22):
a great deal of gratitude to all of the people involved,
as do I not maybe to quite the extent that
you do, but I also am quite fond of what
we're talking about today, which is the sewing machine. Yes,
you so extensively every day, and I do not so extensively,
but I do know how to sew, and I have wonderful,
fond memories of my mother. Mostly they're fond, Sometimes they're frustrated,
(00:44):
but mostly they're fond of my mother teaching me how
to sew when I was a child. Oh yeah, my
mom didn't teach me. She sewed like a fiend. Just
about everybody in my family does. But I was one
of those people that did not want someone over my
shoulder telling you what to do. So she gave me
tools and I learned a lot by making a lot
of mistakes. But I still love it, and I literally
do so just about every single day. That's awesome. It's
(01:08):
a part of my you know, my life stability thing
to get at least a few scenes in each day.
And the invention of the sewing machine is actually a
pretty interesting story. It involves a lot more fighting and
anger than you might suspect, since we think about sewing
is kind of a nice, quiet activity, but it's uh
(01:29):
the invention of the machines that allow us to do
it not so quiet or delightful or peaceful. Not really.
If you watch Schoolhouse Rock growing up, you probably know
about a lie is How in a very you know, punctuated,
short version of story. And if that's in the Mother
Necessity song you are wondering, I love it. But there
are actually a lot of different people in the mix
(01:51):
when it comes to who actually invented the sewing machine,
even though how does generally get most of the credit
in history, and there are reasons for that, which we'll
talk about. But the patent battle that went on in
the US about who got the rights to it is
like tabloid fodder, and it kind of did play out
in some ways in the papers and magazines of the day,
(02:14):
almost in the way that tabloids show you know, celebrity
arguments now, it's pretty fascinating. So prior to sewing machines,
of course, the very earliest way people were sewing was
to use a sharpened bone or stick and punch holes
in whatever their fabric was, normally leather, to pass a
lacing through, right, so the stick or the bone would
(02:35):
go through it all away, and then you would lace well,
or you could just punch it, or you could punch it.
But it was like an all type situation, right, It
wasn't like what happened later, just when needles got eyes
in them that you could actually put your lacing through
and draw the lacing through along with the needle. Yeah,
which was you know, a huge step forward in in
(02:56):
making sewing more easy and quicker. And then as needles
got refined and could be made smaller and smaller out
of metal, a whole you know, new form of art
was born in the form of embroidery. But getting to
the sewing machine is kind of an interesting trail because
it was right in step with the Industrial Revolution for
(03:19):
good reason. As textile manufacturer became more streamlined, less expensive,
people had access to more cloth, so they wanted to
make more things but they needed to be able to
do so more quickly as well. So in seventy Charles
Wisenthal patented a needle for a sewing machine. The machine
(03:40):
never came to fruition, but the needle was interesting because
it had points on each end and an eye in
the middle, and it kind of passed back and forth
through the fabric and carried that the thread with it
to make sort of a um, a stitch that kind
of replicated what human hands could do, right, And a
lot of the very first attempts to mechanize selling we're
(04:02):
all about replicating what people do with their hands when
they sew yes. And then in sevent ninety was the next, uh,
significant patent. There are many many patents along the way
that we're not going to mention because they're just literally
too numerous, right, it would become sort of it would
be a list. And then in seventeen sixty eight, Uh
(04:23):
but so then Thomas Saint, who was an English cabinet maker,
patent tit a machine and I know you love the
title of so I'm gonna let you read it an
entire new method of making in completing shoes, boots, splatter dashes, clogs,
and other articles by means of tools and machines also
invented by me for that purpose, and of certain compositions
(04:45):
of the nature of Japan or varnish, which will be
very advantageous and many useful applications. That is a really
good blanket coverall title for something that you're going to invent. Well,
and you still see patent titles that are like that
today that are the title is just so ex septionally broad.
If you're if you're looking for patents for specific things,
you have to develop some patent searching mojo, and that
(05:06):
is very much like that, except that this one is
particularly long and delightful. Well, and part of the reason
is that Saint actually was describing three different machines and
that patent he really wasn't doing like a narrow pattern.
It was kind of like, I have all these good ideas,
I'm a patent am all at once, and so that's
why they fall under one title. The second of those
machines is actually for stitching, and it wasn't really particularly practical,
(05:32):
but it had several components that we would associate with
modern sewing machines. It had a table where the cloth
could feed through it, had an arm with a needle,
and it had continuous thread feed from a spool. Now,
no actual examples of Saints machine have ever been found,
but there was an Englishman in eighteen seventy three that
found the plans for it and actually tried to build
(05:53):
the machine. It wouldn't work quite right, um, but he
eventually did some tweaking and and made one that more
us worked. But that was another kind of big advancement
in terms of adding in things that got retained in
many for future models. Right, some people have theor eyes
that the st patent is on purpose a little bit
wrong so that no one could steal his ideas, which
(06:15):
is kind of that's a common patent trickery. Yes, So
that would explain why Newton Wilson when he tried to
rebuild his just couldn't quite get it right without making
his own tweaks. In eighteen o four, Thomas Stone and
James Henderson got a patent in France. Their machine made
an overcast stitch that's a lot like a hand stitch,
(06:35):
like a whip stitch. So I was going to try
to describe what that looks like, and and I was
it's going to be more confusing than if I just
skipped that it is. It's basically if you're stitching and
your thread comes, for example, up through the cloth and
then around the raw edge of the cloth and then
back in underneath, so that it makes kind of a spiral. Right.
(06:58):
The example that I am a media leasing in my
mind is the way that Rigorn's sleeves are connected to
his best in his Lord of the Rings costume, like
the primary one that he wears all through Fellowship of
the Ring, which is actually something that the costume designers
pointed out that he could just whip his sleeves back
on and then off it got hot. So Thomas Stone
(07:18):
and James Henderson made a machine that would do that essentially,
but there since there wasn't a continuous feed on the thread,
it was a stop and goat process. Yes, so not
quite ideal, but we're getting closer. Uh. And also in
eighteen o four, John Duncan of Glasgow patented an embroidery
machine and it didn't really function in the same way
as a sewing machine for joining fabric, but it did
(07:39):
introduce an I pointed needle, which becomes really vital in
successful sewing machines. In the future. So for a visual
and I pointed needle is one where the whole for
the thread is in the same end as the point,
the sharp point of it, which is the opposite of
how most hand sewing needles right, and that I pointed
(08:00):
needle comes up in a I don't want to characterize
it as false, but there is an account that comes
up later in the as things really get heated up,
where one inventor claims that he had a vision for this,
and it's it's not always it's not substantiated in any way,
and it's kind of bizarre. We'll give a brief mention
(08:20):
of it, but this is important again John Duncan in
eighteen o four with the eye point a needle y.
So then in eighteen o seven Edward Walter Chapman and
Walter Chapman received a British patent for a machine that
was the first that did not require the needle to
pass all the way through the fabric. And this is
a significant development because again that's something that still holds
(08:42):
true in sewing machines today, but at the time there's
was the first that didn't kind of mimic hand stitching,
and that the needle went all the way through one
side and out the other. Yes, Instead it sort of
poked down and then it did not pass all the
way through and come out the other side like that.
The point of it goes all the down, but the
whole needle doesn't pass all the way through. If you
(09:03):
haven't really watched a sewing machine work, uh, that might
not be a thing that you would visualize immediately. But
in a in a sewing machine today, the needle kind
of dips down and then out instead of going all
the way through and coming completely out the other side.
And it had two needles and the thread actually got
passed between them in a really sort of arduous rethreading technique.
(09:24):
And it was only intended to sew things like belting
and ropes together. It wasn't good for joining two fabrics
together for garments because it really did take quite a
long time. It would take you almost as long as
just hand stitching it. But the idea of the needle
not passing all the way through is important. In eighteen thirty,
Bartellomy Tomantier. It was a French tailor, and his machine
(09:45):
created a chain stitch. It was the first machine to
be produced in a quantity and he had eighty machines
that worked in a shop in Paris within ten years.
People were not super happy, especially tailor's taylor who had
been making their living by sewing things by hand. We're
afraid that this machine was going to take away their livelihood.
(10:05):
And so a mob of angry tailor's broke into the
shop and destroyed all of the machines, and Timonier was
forced to flee. But he did eventually obtain financial backing
to continue the development of his work. Um and despite
great advancements in speed and the acquisition of three new patents,
he ended up holding two patents in France and one
(10:26):
in Britain. The French Revolution kind of stalled his efforts
and really robbed him of what could have been a
legacy in the sewing machine trade. Uh. But then in
eighteen thirty two to eighteen thirty four, Uh, there's a
really important development in America, which is that Walter Hunt
created a machine that made a lock stitch and used
(10:46):
to thread sources similar to like a spool and bobbin
that we use today rather than the single thread chain stitch.
And Hunt worked on a lot of inventions, and he
didn't really see the sewing machine as going anywhere for him.
He didn't think it was particularly important, so he sold
it off without patenting it to a George A. Aerosmith.
(11:06):
Historians mark this design as the first time that machine
development stopped being about replicating human hand stitching and actually
just being its own thing and letting the mechanism kind
of define the design of how it was going to
do the stitching. But it could only do straight lines
and it couldn't sew for a long continuous line. But
Hunts machine design sat dormant for a while. But two
(11:30):
decades later, hunt is going to become a really major
player in some of the legal battles that were going on.
One important thing to note right about this time is
that the American records are a little foggy. Uh. The
Patent Office had a fire in eighteen thirty six that
destroyed a lot of records, so that was problematic and
(11:50):
the legal battles that are to come. Yes, and there's
is a brief side note. A lot of what was
destroyed was the descriptions of items, like they still had
lists of tents that existed, and they actually put a
call out to people that held patents and said hey,
send us a fresh description. We lost those records, but
not many people answered. So there are a lot of
inventions sitting in the legal record there that are it's
(12:14):
just a title. We don't know what they were doing.
Some of them were really simple, like specialty alls that
were made for certain fabrics. But there's a lot of
stuff that probably got lost along the way right well,
And there were huge advancements and machinery happening right at
that time, so it's unfortunate that we have so few
records of so many of them. And then in eighteen
(12:35):
forty two, John J. Greenow, who was an American, also
patented a machine that could make a running stitch and
a backstitch, but no models other than the patent version
were ever made, and his patent remained significant because it's
recognized as the first American sewing machine patent because remember,
Hunt didn't patent his invention, and apparently Aerosmith, who he
(12:56):
sold it to, didn't patent it either, even though he
had the rights at that point. Now, in eighteen forty three,
Benjamin W. Bean was awarded the second U S sewing
machine patent. His machine was different from the others because
it fed the fabric through gears on the way through
the machine. These are precursors to what's known as feed
dogs today, which are these sort of toothy little things
(13:16):
that are under the fabric that kind of nudged the
fabric along ye under the presser foot, which is the
thing that holds the fabric down while the needle does
its work. Um Has also had a clamp mechanism so
that he could attach the sewing machine to a table.
And then in later eighteen forty three, George H. Corliss,
who you may recognize the name because he also invented
(13:38):
the Corless steam engine, invented a mechanism after examining split
seams on a pair of boots. His machine was given
the third sewing machine patent in the US, and it
could perform what's called a saddler stitch to join pieces
of leather, which is a stitch that still used in
some machines today. Uh. But in eighteen forty four he
gave up on the machine because he couldn't get financial
(13:58):
backing and he was really more interested in his steam
work at that point. A year later, James Rodgers got
the fourth US sewing machine patent. He really only had
one small change to the design that Bean had developed earlier.
The gears were positioned a little differently to allow for
a simpler needles shape, and later patents of Beans used
(14:20):
this same setup. And then we get to like the
heavy hitter. Yes, Elias how Jr. Uh And he was
born to a farming family in Spencer, Massachusetts in eighteen nineteen,
and he left home at sixteen to make his way
training as a machinist, and he eventually landed a job
in Boston, and allegedly he overheard a conversation in the
(14:43):
instrument shop where he worked between two people regarding the
need for a mechanized method for sewing, and that allegedly
sparked him to work on a design of his own
at one point when he was homesick from work and
his brain was just going a little bit crazy being
idle is Also this is where I'll mentioned that weird
sort of rumory legend, the part of the story which
(15:06):
is that in some instances how claims that he had
a dream involving like tribal chiefs. It's very um interesting.
There are actually a lot of online places where you
can look at dream analysis of this dream that led
him to the use of the I pointed needle for
(15:27):
the machine, but we know it had already been in use,
and in fact, he doesn't mention that in the patent
or claim in his patent that he invented that. So
it's kind of an interesting, weird side story. And it
often gets told as, oh, the idea for the showing
machine came to him in a dream, But that's really oversimplified,
and it's kind of taking the actual engineering part of
(15:48):
it out of the equation, which isn't really smart to do, right.
I usually take the it came to me in a
dream inventor story with a grain of salt, because while
it's completely feasible that you're thinking on something, you may
have sort of an epiphany on it while sleeping, like
it's usually presented as bolt from the blue, out of nowhere,
(16:09):
suddenly had this dream, which is not very likely, and
it's more often just an attempt to mythologize where the
thing came from exactly. And we know, I mean, we've
been you know, discussing all of these sort of small
steps forward in sewing machine engineering, that none of this
just sprouted overnight. It was all, you know, a slow
burn developmental process. Right, these things built on one another
(16:31):
for a long time. But in September of eighteen forty six,
how was granted the fifth U. S. Patent, which was
Patent number fifty for a sewing machine, and it was
actually his second version of the sewing machine. His first
prototype was working in eighteen forty five and was used
to sew seams on at least two and possibly more
men's suits that were made of wool and house. Patton
(16:54):
includes five very specific claims as to the working to
those to his machine, and THEO came up later in court. Again,
none of them mentioned a dream scenario where he thought
of how to make a needlework. And we're not going
to read all five of them because it is kind
of a lengthy description, but they basically cover the forming
(17:14):
of the theme, the lifting of the thread, holding the
thread in place by shuttle, the way of arranging and
combining levers with a sliding box, and holding the cloth
to be sewed uh into the machine. So this is
sort of the five steps that his patent covered. And
all of these are kind of interesting because most of
(17:37):
them involve action created by the combination of other pieces.
None of these say I invented this piece for that piece.
It's all pretty much focused on the engineering of how
pieces came together, right. His patent is very process oriented
rather than which is very important in later legal battles.
(17:57):
But How tried for three years to get manufacturers interested
in his design and willing to make it, and really struggled,
and eventually, with the help of his brother, who he
sent on ahead of him to England, they sold the
British patent rights to William Thomas for two British pounds sterling,
and How actually went to Britain to work with Thomas
(18:20):
and adapted the machine to make umbrellas and corsets, but
that business deal did not prove to be especially profitable.
Some accounts suggest that the relationship between How and Thomas
got really really contentious and argumentative, and that Thomas didn't
really want to pay How as an employee the salary
that he had suggested he would pay once the changes
(18:42):
to the initial machine had been made. He was kind
of done with him. So there's a little bit of
drama there now. But How decided to come back. But
in the meantime there's another development and eighty eight John A.
Bradshaw was granted the sixth US selling machine patent. His
design was focused on correcting errors and house designs, and
(19:05):
some of his language here is just a little insulting.
He's not very nice about it. Um. One of the
things that happens in patent is a thing called the
prior art, and that sort of a description of all
the stuff that came before what you're patenting. And his
would include language like this is a very bungling device
and is a great incumbrance to the action of the machine.
(19:27):
That was his description of house needle design. Right. So,
in eighteen forty nine How returned to the US after
leaving his British business endeavors and discovered that there was
a lively sewing machine enterprise of foots that in the
time that he was gone, suddenly people went, oh, sewing
machines are a great idea. We should be making and
selling them. Uh. And there was even a machine which
(19:49):
was which had the seventh U S patent based on
Bradshaw Bradshaw's design that was in production and being offered
for sale. Uh. The patent went to Charles Morey and
Joseph B. Johnson in eighty nine, but they were actually
selling it even before the patent was granted and finalized,
and before all of that, they were also featured in
Scientific American, which was featuring a lot of articles about
(20:13):
um various machine developments, and sewing machines come up in
it a lot. Then, in mid eighteen forty nine, Jatha
s Knit was issued a patent on a slightly modified
version of the Maury Johnson machine. His change had to
do with the way that the cloth was held. Taught
during stitching. If you don't hold your cloth with the
right tension, your stitches are going to be all bunched
(20:34):
up and yucky. So that's an important development, but it
seems to have died on the vine. It didn't actually
get into production. But on the very same day that
the Knit patent was issued, John Batchelder was also given
a patent for a model that featured a continuous sewing
mechanism and an endless belt to feed cloth into the machine,
and Batchelder sold that patent to I Am Singer, to
(20:57):
Isaac Singer. You'll know that name if you do any
sewing in the mid eighteen fifties, and it actually became
one of the most important elements of Singers designed. I
learned a sew on a singer, I think most people
did well. And in addition to having learned to sew
on a singer, I know that both of my grandmother's
had in their their stuff that came with them when
(21:18):
they got married and established a household treadle sewing machines
that were singer machines. I have a treadle singer that
is from I think nineteen ten, yes, and it was
in Brian's family from the day it was sold, like
they purchased it, and it's been handed down and came
to me, and I'm very grateful for It needs some restoration,
which is one of my side projects that I never
(21:39):
get to but I will eventually. So sadly this thing
that has quite fond memories for both of us is
also where suddenly sewing machines become all kinds of contentious,
really really argumentative things going on. So in eighteen fifty
Allan B. Wilson was working on a lockstitch machine which
used a mechanism very very similar to the modern machine.
(22:02):
His mechanism could also stitch forward and backward, which was
a first uh and he applied for a patent after
making a second prototype model, but he was contacted by
the people who owned the Bradshop patent from eighty eight
with a claim that they owned the concept of the
double pointed shuttle that made up part of his machine,
and that claim was completely false, but Wilson couldn't afford
(22:23):
to fight them, and he gave up half of his
claim to A. P. Cline and Edward Lee in November
of eighteen fifty. But after just a few months he
sold them the rest of his interest and retained only
limited rights and he pretty much got shafted in the deal.
He never made any money off of it. He didn't
even I don't think, get full payment for all of
the rights that he sold them, and it was it
(22:44):
was not true their claim in the first place. Yeah,
but he just didn't, you know, he was uh, you know,
relatively modest means inventor. He didn't he couldn't fight a
big business at that point, so he kind of found
what like the most equitable solution, which is to sell
at that point. But they went on to pretty decent
(23:06):
success with it, and they still used his names in
the ads. They actually placed an added Scientific American in
eighteen fifty one that said A B. Wilson's sewing machine,
the best and only practical sewing machine, not larger than
a ladies work box, for the trifling sum of thirty
five dollars. Just they're still making money off his name,
and he's just he's not involved anymore, completely out of
(23:28):
the loop and kind of mistreated. At that point, Elias
Howe decided that he needed to protect his rights and
royalties from all of these inventions that were being sold everywhere,
and so if he could trace his roots back to
his design, he went after them. Before How's work, most
machines were taking all kinds of different approaches to making stitches,
(23:51):
but from Bradshaw on most of the stitching processes were
improvements on the design and his patents number already or
his patent number forties seven fifty from eighteen forty six,
So if he could trace work back to that, he
would jump on it. Yes, And in eighteen fifty, after
watching one of Isaac Singer's sons perform a demonstration of
(24:13):
their machine that they were selling, how contacted Singer about
the infringement on his patent and eventually demanded two thousand
dollars in royalty payment. And at the time, you know,
the Singer family was just starting out selling some machines.
They were like, we don't have that kind of money. Uh.
And he came back later and I was like, well,
you're doing pretty well now and demanded a bigger sum,
And then negotiations did not go well and got really
(24:35):
ugly in a hurry. Singer physically threatened to lie as
How uh. And Singer was known for having a bit
of a hot temper and doing some kind of unkind
dealings and intimidation tactics when it came to his work
with business partners. So between How who felt very wronged
at this point, and Singer, who was pretty aggressive, which
(24:59):
paid off for him in many ways, it really got
ugly in a hurry. But in eighteen fifty two How
found a way to fight them, which is that he
sold half of his interest in his patent to George Bliss,
who manufactured machines that he built this house patent, but
they actually had changed pretty significantly from how his original design.
But even so, the money that How made from this
(25:20):
partnership funded his patent lawsuits, of which there were many,
and he really went after Singer with vigor. He did
not like him. He sued other manufacturers, but the suit
against Singer was the most combative. And after a judgment
though in house favor in a suit that he had
brought against UM, a group called Larow and Blodgett, other
firms started to settle because they kind of saw the
(25:43):
turning of the tide and that probably other judgments were
going to fall in house favors. So a lot of
firms were just like, how can we work this out
out of court? Ye? Basically, now that he had the
money to do it, he was winning. Yes. In eighteen
fifty three, as suits were beginning to be settled, How
started selling his royalty licenses. He sold them to a
lot of different groups UM along with his brother. Uh.
(26:09):
These licenses let manufacturers use any part of the How
patent in their machines, and some of them were stamped
with his name and patent information. Uh. Some have been
incorrectly identified as house machines when they really weren't. And
his brother, also manufacturing machines at this time, was pretty
successful at it. So we're we really have two big
(26:29):
players at this point, How and all the people he
sold his royalty licenses to and Singer. Yes. And then
in July eighteen fifty three, two advertisements ran on the
same page of the New York Daily Tribune. I will
read the first one. It says, the sewing machine. It
has been recently decided by the United States Court that
(26:52):
Elias how Jr. Of number three oh five Broadway, was
the originator of the sewing machines now extensively used. Call
it his office, and see forty of them in constant
use upon cloth, leather, et cetera, and judge for yourselves
as to their practicality. Also see a certified copy from
the records of the United States Courts of the injunction
against Singers Machine so called, which is conclusive. You that
(27:15):
want sewing machines be cautious how you purchase them of
others than him or those licensed under him, else the
law will compel you to pay twice over. So at
that point there was in an injunction against singers machine.
It was kind of like being put on hold, but
the suit had not settled yet. And then there is
(27:35):
the other ad that ran, which is the Singer ad.
The singer ad said sewing machines. For the last two years,
Elias how Junior of Massachusetts has been threatening suits and
injunctions against all the world who make, use or sell
sewing machines. We have sold many machines, are selling them rapidly,
and have good right to sell them. The public do
(27:56):
not acknowledge Mr Howe's pretensions, and for the best reasons.
One machines made according to how It's pattern are of
no practical use. He tried several years without being to
being able to introduce one two. It is not notorious,
especially in New York, that how was not the original
inventor of the machine combining the needle and shuttle, and
(28:16):
that his claim to that is not valid. Finally, we
make and sell the best sewing machines. It all sounds
so polite, but it's so snarky. It's really snarky, and
it's so different from what we think of and ads
today that it's not at all what you would expect
to see with two companies that are in in competition
(28:37):
with one another. Uh. And How went after Singer for
libel because you know, Singer at that point was not
just saying that they were selling machines, but that how
was wrong and that he didn't invent these things, and
these were all, you know, part of a an ongoing
legal battle, so they kind of were really playing fast
and loose with language. You'll notice that Houses very careful
(28:59):
to only say things that are accurate and true, and like,
come and see the certificate we have from the government.
But not at no point does he say, you know,
and Singers an idiot, or that he he's trying to
steal ideas like he It's very carefully worded, whereas Singers
is a little more lusty. Singers is like, this guy
(29:19):
is a liar and he's stupid. Yeah, so that's why
how I went after Singer for Liabel and the New
York Daily Tribune as well. There is also a story
about Scientific American kind of printing there, like okay, the
libel thing against the papers a little silly, you guys,
Like they kind of would post these opinions on the
state of affairs periodically, which is kind of interesting. Singer
(29:41):
kind of went on a personal crusade to discredit How's
claim to rites on the selling machine. He would seek
out machines and inventors that predated How's work to try
to prove that what How did was not original. He
went to Europe and even China, and the problem was
the wording of how it is patent. He had patented
(30:02):
the combination of the shuttle and the I pointed beatle,
not just the invention of a particular element of the machine.
So his patent claim was pretty accurate. Nobody had patented
that process. All these different pieces of it had been patented,
but not all put together correct. So eventually Singer even
colluded with Walter Hunt, remember him from earlier on. He
(30:26):
made a machine and never patented it. He uh. He
brought in engineer William Whiting. Singer did to help resurrect
Hunt's design because Hunt apparently found old pieces of the
machine like in an attic, but couldn't actually get them
all together and working anymore. He couldn't quite remember how
it all went, but so this engineer assisted him. And
then Hunt attempted to file for patent on his eighteen
(30:47):
thirty four invention to establish that he and not Elias
how had in fact invented the sewing machine. Again, the
Scientific American kind of made their opinion known. They published
a rather scathing commentary on Hunt's assertions, calling them quote
rusty claims uh, and a trial at the patent office followed,
and after hundreds of pages of testimony, like Singer found
(31:10):
everybody he could to kind of feed Hunt's case because
he really wanted to take down How any way he could. Uh.
There were hundreds and hundreds of pages in a long
drawn out trial, but pattent Commissioner Charles Mason ruled in
favor of How on eight fifty four, and he said
the Mason said that Hunt's loss was due in part
(31:30):
to the eighteen years he sat on his design. Uh
and Hunt actually appealed to the Circuit Court of the
District of Columbia, claiming that Mason didn't really have the
authority to make such a ruling, but Mason's ruling was
upheld by the court. So, spurred by the success of
this decision, and still in a big fight with Singer,
How decided that the next thing he would do was
(31:52):
file suits against every establishment selling Singer machines in Boston
and asked for preliminary injunctions to shut down those say
Uh Hunt's previous invention was invoked by those named in
the suits, claiming, no, no, there's still some doubt, even
though there had been a ruling already as to whether
or not How really had the rights to all of
the machines being sold, and so they tried to you know,
(32:15):
they were dredging up that case that had already been decided.
But the judge in the matter still deemed House patents
infringed upon and he found in House favor. So the
Boston defendants, who were now in some serious business trouble,
they had had their business basically shut down, they turned
around and filed suits against Singer for basically kind of
(32:36):
dragging them into this mess and giving them patents and
machines that they really had no legal right to sell.
Singer and How eventually settled their suit, and they announced
they had done so in Scientific American in August of
eighteen fifty four, which should have settled the matter, but
it did not at all. The piece did not last
(32:58):
for very long. Now that he was in control of
the sewing machine industry, How started working on improvements to
his own machine, but this resulted in a lot of
the companies he had gone after suing him for patent infringement,
since many of them held patents on the basic improvements
that he was trying to implement. There's just no end
to the litigation. There's really not. In eighteen fifty six,
(33:21):
the president of Grover and Baker, which was one of
the companies involved in these suits against How the president's
name was Orlando B. Potter, and he proposed an interesting truce,
a concept which became known as a combination, not to
be confused with the undergarment of the same name, a
patent combination. And he kind of took a step back
and realized, we are all just hurting ourselves at this point.
(33:43):
We are wadded up in litigation all the time, and
we are holding up production and just throwing money in
the legal actions. What we would rather be doing is
making and selling sewing machines. So he started said, let's
do that. Yeah, they all joined forces. Uh Potter's company, How, Wheeler,
(34:03):
Wilson and Company, and Singer all joined forces. They pulled
their patents to make one unified combination patent for sewing
machine and How it was pretty resistant to this idea
at first, because he felt like he was giving up
more than anybody else in order to get this steal together,
but he eventually relented. Um he only agreed to join
the sewing machine combination, which is sometimes called the sewing
(34:26):
machine shot Trust, if the other parties agreed to stipulations,
and those stipulations were pretty astute business moves. One was,
how would get a five dollar royalty on every machine
sold in the US and a dollar for every machine
that was exported to another country. And it's estimated that
between eighteen fifty six, when this deal was struck in
(34:47):
eighteen sixty seven, when house patent expired, he made more
than two million dollars, which is there are several layers
of that's crazy. One of the two million dollars we're
talking about, you know, two million eighteen sixties dollars um
and the fact that he was so invested in all
this litigation when his patent was on the verge of expiring.
I mean, part of this is, of course he had
(35:08):
to do it then because otherwise he would have lost everything.
And then part of it makes me kind of go.
I probably would have thrown up my hands much earlier
when I was getting that close to the expiration of
a patent, But you would have missed out on two
million dollars. I know, I'm a terrible business person, But
in eighteen sixty seven when house patent was up, so
after his eleven years of enjoying all of that money,
coming in. He did request another extension of the patent,
(35:31):
but he was refused and he actually died later that year.
A singer, of course we know, because his name is
still on sewing machines sold all the time. Wasn't astute businessman,
and he really made a name for himself in that industry.
I feel like we should do another podcast on the
Singer family because there is a world of fascination in
the things that happened there. But that's how it eventually settled.
(35:55):
There was a lot of fighting and fighting and clawing,
and then a settlement, and then a little more biting
and fighting and clawing, and then some person that steps
forward and says, this is really stupid. We could all
be making money, so let's go make money now. Yeah.
I'm glad that they finally came to that. Me too,
(36:15):
because sewing machines are awesome. How would I have all
my sewing machines otherwise, you know, how would I have
learned how to make nightgowns and pajamas and things. I
don't know why nightgowns and pajamas are the things that
I thought of, but we know my mom. My mom
taught me how to make easy things I didn't learn
how to put a zipper in until I was much
older and no longer living with my mom. Bustle gowns.
We wouldn't be able to make bustle agowns to look
(36:36):
like we lived in the time when these people were fighting. Yeah. Well,
and it wasn't until we were I was looking at
your outline for the podcast that it really dawned on
me how similar umbrellas and corsets are to one another.
I kind of had that moment as well, where I
was like, oh, yeah, there's a casing and then a
firm element that goes through it. Yeah, it does make
total it's all kind of stretched tight together over frame.
Like that's really They're the same thing, just in a
(36:58):
different orientation, different shapes. So I believe you have some
listener mail for us. Uh, the first one, I won't
read the whole email, but it is from our listener
Alan and he points out boo boo. When we were
doing the Elswear Engine episode, at one point I misspoken.
I said eighteen ninety three when I should have said
eighteen sixty three regarding I Believe the Battle of Helena,
(37:18):
and it's because I typed it wrong. Because my brain
sometimes rotates those new balls because they look so similar.
So my apologies to anyone who got confused and went, wait,
we jumped thirty years because we didn't uh. The other
email that I have is from our listeners, Zoe, and
she says, dear ladies. The story of the kitten wedding
from the Taxidermy podcast reminded me of a challenge my
(37:39):
writing teacher once posted to my school's creative writing club.
For some reason, a good proportion of stories and poems
that we come up with are quite dark. Eventually, my
teacher got so fed up with the angsty, sob stories
that he challenged us to write the puppy wedding. The
main guideline was that no animals were to be harmed
in the telling of the story. No one, as of yet,
has successfully completed the challenge. Maybe if we change it
(38:01):
to kittens, we'll have better luck. Keep up with good work.
Thank you, Zoe. That's really cute. I should also point
out several people have written us about We mentioned at
the end of the tax Germy podcast that there aren't
that many movies about taxidermy, and several people mentioned Dinner
for Schmucks, which does include some taxidermy very similar to
Walter Potter's work, and I had completely forgotten about it,
(38:21):
So thank you to all of them. If you would
like to write to us, you may absolutely do so.
That email address is History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
You can also hook up with us on Twitter at
misst in history or at Facebook at facebook dot com
slash history Class stuff. If you want to learn more
about what we have talked about today and get some
really good visuals on how these machines we've been talking
(38:42):
about and trying to describe actually work, you can go
to our website and type in sewing in the search
bar and you will actually get how sewing machines work.
And that article has some cool animated illustrations that will
show you exactly how threads pass uh back and forth
using a shuttle in with a chain stitch. And you
can look at that and almost anything else on our website,
(39:02):
which is how Stuff Works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com. M This episode of Stuff You Missed
(39:34):
in History Class is brought to you by Audible
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I am Tracy V. Wilson, and
I'm excited because we're talking about one of my favorite
things today. It's an invention that I love and owe
(00:22):
a great deal of gratitude to all of the people involved,
as do I not maybe to quite the extent that
you do, but I also am quite fond of what
we're talking about today, which is the sewing machine. Yes,
you so extensively every day, and I do not so extensively,
but I do know how to sew, and I have wonderful,
fond memories of my mother. Mostly they're fond, Sometimes they're frustrated,
(00:44):
but mostly they're fond of my mother teaching me how
to sew when I was a child. Oh yeah, my
mom didn't teach me. She sewed like a fiend. Just
about everybody in my family does. But I was one
of those people that did not want someone over my
shoulder telling you what to do. So she gave me
tools and I learned a lot by making a lot
of mistakes. But I still love it, and I literally
do so just about every single day. That's awesome. It's
(01:08):
a part of my you know, my life stability thing
to get at least a few scenes in each day.
And the invention of the sewing machine is actually a
pretty interesting story. It involves a lot more fighting and
anger than you might suspect, since we think about sewing
is kind of a nice, quiet activity, but it's uh
(01:29):
the invention of the machines that allow us to do
it not so quiet or delightful or peaceful. Not really.
If you watch Schoolhouse Rock growing up, you probably know
about a lie is How in a very you know, punctuated,
short version of story. And if that's in the Mother
Necessity song you are wondering, I love it. But there
are actually a lot of different people in the mix
(01:51):
when it comes to who actually invented the sewing machine,
even though how does generally get most of the credit
in history, and there are reasons for that, which we'll
talk about. But the patent battle that went on in
the US about who got the rights to it is
like tabloid fodder, and it kind of did play out
in some ways in the papers and magazines of the day,
(02:14):
almost in the way that tabloids show you know, celebrity
arguments now, it's pretty fascinating. So prior to sewing machines,
of course, the very earliest way people were sewing was
to use a sharpened bone or stick and punch holes
in whatever their fabric was, normally leather, to pass a
lacing through, right, so the stick or the bone would
(02:35):
go through it all away, and then you would lace well,
or you could just punch it, or you could punch it.
But it was like an all type situation, right, It
wasn't like what happened later, just when needles got eyes
in them that you could actually put your lacing through
and draw the lacing through along with the needle. Yeah,
which was you know, a huge step forward in in
(02:56):
making sewing more easy and quicker. And then as needles
got refined and could be made smaller and smaller out
of metal, a whole you know, new form of art
was born in the form of embroidery. But getting to
the sewing machine is kind of an interesting trail because
it was right in step with the Industrial Revolution for
(03:19):
good reason. As textile manufacturer became more streamlined, less expensive,
people had access to more cloth, so they wanted to
make more things but they needed to be able to
do so more quickly as well. So in seventy Charles
Wisenthal patented a needle for a sewing machine. The machine
(03:40):
never came to fruition, but the needle was interesting because
it had points on each end and an eye in
the middle, and it kind of passed back and forth
through the fabric and carried that the thread with it
to make sort of a um, a stitch that kind
of replicated what human hands could do, right, And a
lot of the very first attempts to mechanize selling we're
(04:02):
all about replicating what people do with their hands when
they sew yes. And then in sevent ninety was the next, uh,
significant patent. There are many many patents along the way
that we're not going to mention because they're just literally
too numerous, right, it would become sort of it would
be a list. And then in seventeen sixty eight, Uh
(04:23):
but so then Thomas Saint, who was an English cabinet maker,
patent tit a machine and I know you love the
title of so I'm gonna let you read it an
entire new method of making in completing shoes, boots, splatter dashes, clogs,
and other articles by means of tools and machines also
invented by me for that purpose, and of certain compositions
(04:45):
of the nature of Japan or varnish, which will be
very advantageous and many useful applications. That is a really
good blanket coverall title for something that you're going to invent. Well,
and you still see patent titles that are like that
today that are the title is just so ex septionally broad.
If you're if you're looking for patents for specific things,
you have to develop some patent searching mojo, and that
(05:06):
is very much like that, except that this one is
particularly long and delightful. Well, and part of the reason
is that Saint actually was describing three different machines and
that patent he really wasn't doing like a narrow pattern.
It was kind of like, I have all these good ideas,
I'm a patent am all at once, and so that's
why they fall under one title. The second of those
machines is actually for stitching, and it wasn't really particularly practical,
(05:32):
but it had several components that we would associate with
modern sewing machines. It had a table where the cloth
could feed through it, had an arm with a needle,
and it had continuous thread feed from a spool. Now,
no actual examples of Saints machine have ever been found,
but there was an Englishman in eighteen seventy three that
found the plans for it and actually tried to build
(05:53):
the machine. It wouldn't work quite right, um, but he
eventually did some tweaking and and made one that more
us worked. But that was another kind of big advancement
in terms of adding in things that got retained in
many for future models. Right, some people have theor eyes
that the st patent is on purpose a little bit
wrong so that no one could steal his ideas, which
(06:15):
is kind of that's a common patent trickery. Yes, So
that would explain why Newton Wilson when he tried to
rebuild his just couldn't quite get it right without making
his own tweaks. In eighteen o four, Thomas Stone and
James Henderson got a patent in France. Their machine made
an overcast stitch that's a lot like a hand stitch,
(06:35):
like a whip stitch. So I was going to try
to describe what that looks like, and and I was
it's going to be more confusing than if I just
skipped that it is. It's basically if you're stitching and
your thread comes, for example, up through the cloth and
then around the raw edge of the cloth and then
back in underneath, so that it makes kind of a spiral. Right.
(06:58):
The example that I am a media leasing in my
mind is the way that Rigorn's sleeves are connected to
his best in his Lord of the Rings costume, like
the primary one that he wears all through Fellowship of
the Ring, which is actually something that the costume designers
pointed out that he could just whip his sleeves back
on and then off it got hot. So Thomas Stone
(07:18):
and James Henderson made a machine that would do that essentially,
but there since there wasn't a continuous feed on the thread,
it was a stop and goat process. Yes, so not
quite ideal, but we're getting closer. Uh. And also in
eighteen o four, John Duncan of Glasgow patented an embroidery
machine and it didn't really function in the same way
as a sewing machine for joining fabric, but it did
(07:39):
introduce an I pointed needle, which becomes really vital in
successful sewing machines. In the future. So for a visual
and I pointed needle is one where the whole for
the thread is in the same end as the point,
the sharp point of it, which is the opposite of
how most hand sewing needles right, and that I pointed
(08:00):
needle comes up in a I don't want to characterize
it as false, but there is an account that comes
up later in the as things really get heated up,
where one inventor claims that he had a vision for this,
and it's it's not always it's not substantiated in any way,
and it's kind of bizarre. We'll give a brief mention
(08:20):
of it, but this is important again John Duncan in
eighteen o four with the eye point a needle y.
So then in eighteen o seven Edward Walter Chapman and
Walter Chapman received a British patent for a machine that
was the first that did not require the needle to
pass all the way through the fabric. And this is
a significant development because again that's something that still holds
(08:42):
true in sewing machines today, but at the time there's
was the first that didn't kind of mimic hand stitching,
and that the needle went all the way through one
side and out the other. Yes, Instead it sort of
poked down and then it did not pass all the
way through and come out the other side like that.
The point of it goes all the down, but the
whole needle doesn't pass all the way through. If you
(09:03):
haven't really watched a sewing machine work, uh, that might
not be a thing that you would visualize immediately. But
in a in a sewing machine today, the needle kind
of dips down and then out instead of going all
the way through and coming completely out the other side.
And it had two needles and the thread actually got
passed between them in a really sort of arduous rethreading technique.
(09:24):
And it was only intended to sew things like belting
and ropes together. It wasn't good for joining two fabrics
together for garments because it really did take quite a
long time. It would take you almost as long as
just hand stitching it. But the idea of the needle
not passing all the way through is important. In eighteen thirty,
Bartellomy Tomantier. It was a French tailor, and his machine
(09:45):
created a chain stitch. It was the first machine to
be produced in a quantity and he had eighty machines
that worked in a shop in Paris within ten years.
People were not super happy, especially tailor's taylor who had
been making their living by sewing things by hand. We're
afraid that this machine was going to take away their livelihood.
(10:05):
And so a mob of angry tailor's broke into the
shop and destroyed all of the machines, and Timonier was
forced to flee. But he did eventually obtain financial backing
to continue the development of his work. Um and despite
great advancements in speed and the acquisition of three new patents,
he ended up holding two patents in France and one
(10:26):
in Britain. The French Revolution kind of stalled his efforts
and really robbed him of what could have been a
legacy in the sewing machine trade. Uh. But then in
eighteen thirty two to eighteen thirty four, Uh, there's a
really important development in America, which is that Walter Hunt
created a machine that made a lock stitch and used
(10:46):
to thread sources similar to like a spool and bobbin
that we use today rather than the single thread chain stitch.
And Hunt worked on a lot of inventions, and he
didn't really see the sewing machine as going anywhere for him.
He didn't think it was particularly important, so he sold
it off without patenting it to a George A. Aerosmith.
(11:06):
Historians mark this design as the first time that machine
development stopped being about replicating human hand stitching and actually
just being its own thing and letting the mechanism kind
of define the design of how it was going to
do the stitching. But it could only do straight lines
and it couldn't sew for a long continuous line. But
Hunts machine design sat dormant for a while. But two
(11:30):
decades later, hunt is going to become a really major
player in some of the legal battles that were going on.
One important thing to note right about this time is
that the American records are a little foggy. Uh. The
Patent Office had a fire in eighteen thirty six that
destroyed a lot of records, so that was problematic and
(11:50):
the legal battles that are to come. Yes, and there's
is a brief side note. A lot of what was
destroyed was the descriptions of items, like they still had
lists of tents that existed, and they actually put a
call out to people that held patents and said hey,
send us a fresh description. We lost those records, but
not many people answered. So there are a lot of
inventions sitting in the legal record there that are it's
(12:14):
just a title. We don't know what they were doing.
Some of them were really simple, like specialty alls that
were made for certain fabrics. But there's a lot of
stuff that probably got lost along the way right well,
And there were huge advancements and machinery happening right at
that time, so it's unfortunate that we have so few
records of so many of them. And then in eighteen
(12:35):
forty two, John J. Greenow, who was an American, also
patented a machine that could make a running stitch and
a backstitch, but no models other than the patent version
were ever made, and his patent remained significant because it's
recognized as the first American sewing machine patent because remember,
Hunt didn't patent his invention, and apparently Aerosmith, who he
(12:56):
sold it to, didn't patent it either, even though he
had the rights at that point. Now, in eighteen forty three,
Benjamin W. Bean was awarded the second U S sewing
machine patent. His machine was different from the others because
it fed the fabric through gears on the way through
the machine. These are precursors to what's known as feed
dogs today, which are these sort of toothy little things
(13:16):
that are under the fabric that kind of nudged the
fabric along ye under the presser foot, which is the
thing that holds the fabric down while the needle does
its work. Um Has also had a clamp mechanism so
that he could attach the sewing machine to a table.
And then in later eighteen forty three, George H. Corliss,
who you may recognize the name because he also invented
(13:38):
the Corless steam engine, invented a mechanism after examining split
seams on a pair of boots. His machine was given
the third sewing machine patent in the US, and it
could perform what's called a saddler stitch to join pieces
of leather, which is a stitch that still used in
some machines today. Uh. But in eighteen forty four he
gave up on the machine because he couldn't get financial
(13:58):
backing and he was really more interested in his steam
work at that point. A year later, James Rodgers got
the fourth US sewing machine patent. He really only had
one small change to the design that Bean had developed earlier.
The gears were positioned a little differently to allow for
a simpler needles shape, and later patents of Beans used
(14:20):
this same setup. And then we get to like the
heavy hitter. Yes, Elias how Jr. Uh And he was
born to a farming family in Spencer, Massachusetts in eighteen nineteen,
and he left home at sixteen to make his way
training as a machinist, and he eventually landed a job
in Boston, and allegedly he overheard a conversation in the
(14:43):
instrument shop where he worked between two people regarding the
need for a mechanized method for sewing, and that allegedly
sparked him to work on a design of his own
at one point when he was homesick from work and
his brain was just going a little bit crazy being
idle is Also this is where I'll mentioned that weird
sort of rumory legend, the part of the story which
(15:06):
is that in some instances how claims that he had
a dream involving like tribal chiefs. It's very um interesting.
There are actually a lot of online places where you
can look at dream analysis of this dream that led
him to the use of the I pointed needle for
(15:27):
the machine, but we know it had already been in use,
and in fact, he doesn't mention that in the patent
or claim in his patent that he invented that. So
it's kind of an interesting, weird side story. And it
often gets told as, oh, the idea for the showing
machine came to him in a dream, But that's really oversimplified,
and it's kind of taking the actual engineering part of
(15:48):
it out of the equation, which isn't really smart to do, right.
I usually take the it came to me in a
dream inventor story with a grain of salt, because while
it's completely feasible that you're thinking on something, you may
have sort of an epiphany on it while sleeping, like
it's usually presented as bolt from the blue, out of nowhere,
(16:09):
suddenly had this dream, which is not very likely, and
it's more often just an attempt to mythologize where the
thing came from exactly. And we know, I mean, we've
been you know, discussing all of these sort of small
steps forward in sewing machine engineering, that none of this
just sprouted overnight. It was all, you know, a slow
burn developmental process. Right, these things built on one another
(16:31):
for a long time. But in September of eighteen forty six,
how was granted the fifth U. S. Patent, which was
Patent number fifty for a sewing machine, and it was
actually his second version of the sewing machine. His first
prototype was working in eighteen forty five and was used
to sew seams on at least two and possibly more
men's suits that were made of wool and house. Patton
(16:54):
includes five very specific claims as to the working to
those to his machine, and THEO came up later in court. Again,
none of them mentioned a dream scenario where he thought
of how to make a needlework. And we're not going
to read all five of them because it is kind
of a lengthy description, but they basically cover the forming
(17:14):
of the theme, the lifting of the thread, holding the
thread in place by shuttle, the way of arranging and
combining levers with a sliding box, and holding the cloth
to be sewed uh into the machine. So this is
sort of the five steps that his patent covered. And
all of these are kind of interesting because most of
(17:37):
them involve action created by the combination of other pieces.
None of these say I invented this piece for that piece.
It's all pretty much focused on the engineering of how
pieces came together, right. His patent is very process oriented
rather than which is very important in later legal battles.
(17:57):
But How tried for three years to get manufacturers interested
in his design and willing to make it, and really struggled,
and eventually, with the help of his brother, who he
sent on ahead of him to England, they sold the
British patent rights to William Thomas for two British pounds sterling,
and How actually went to Britain to work with Thomas
(18:20):
and adapted the machine to make umbrellas and corsets, but
that business deal did not prove to be especially profitable.
Some accounts suggest that the relationship between How and Thomas
got really really contentious and argumentative, and that Thomas didn't
really want to pay How as an employee the salary
that he had suggested he would pay once the changes
(18:42):
to the initial machine had been made. He was kind
of done with him. So there's a little bit of
drama there now. But How decided to come back. But
in the meantime there's another development and eighty eight John A.
Bradshaw was granted the sixth US selling machine patent. His
design was focused on correcting errors and house designs, and
(19:05):
some of his language here is just a little insulting.
He's not very nice about it. Um. One of the
things that happens in patent is a thing called the
prior art, and that sort of a description of all
the stuff that came before what you're patenting. And his
would include language like this is a very bungling device
and is a great incumbrance to the action of the machine.
(19:27):
That was his description of house needle design. Right. So,
in eighteen forty nine How returned to the US after
leaving his British business endeavors and discovered that there was
a lively sewing machine enterprise of foots that in the
time that he was gone, suddenly people went, oh, sewing
machines are a great idea. We should be making and
selling them. Uh. And there was even a machine which
(19:49):
was which had the seventh U S patent based on
Bradshaw Bradshaw's design that was in production and being offered
for sale. Uh. The patent went to Charles Morey and
Joseph B. Johnson in eighty nine, but they were actually
selling it even before the patent was granted and finalized,
and before all of that, they were also featured in
Scientific American, which was featuring a lot of articles about
(20:13):
um various machine developments, and sewing machines come up in
it a lot. Then, in mid eighteen forty nine, Jatha
s Knit was issued a patent on a slightly modified
version of the Maury Johnson machine. His change had to
do with the way that the cloth was held. Taught
during stitching. If you don't hold your cloth with the
right tension, your stitches are going to be all bunched
(20:34):
up and yucky. So that's an important development, but it
seems to have died on the vine. It didn't actually
get into production. But on the very same day that
the Knit patent was issued, John Batchelder was also given
a patent for a model that featured a continuous sewing
mechanism and an endless belt to feed cloth into the machine,
and Batchelder sold that patent to I Am Singer, to
(20:57):
Isaac Singer. You'll know that name if you do any
sewing in the mid eighteen fifties, and it actually became
one of the most important elements of Singers designed. I
learned a sew on a singer, I think most people
did well. And in addition to having learned to sew
on a singer, I know that both of my grandmother's
had in their their stuff that came with them when
(21:18):
they got married and established a household treadle sewing machines
that were singer machines. I have a treadle singer that
is from I think nineteen ten, yes, and it was
in Brian's family from the day it was sold, like
they purchased it, and it's been handed down and came
to me, and I'm very grateful for It needs some restoration,
which is one of my side projects that I never
(21:39):
get to but I will eventually. So sadly this thing
that has quite fond memories for both of us is
also where suddenly sewing machines become all kinds of contentious,
really really argumentative things going on. So in eighteen fifty
Allan B. Wilson was working on a lockstitch machine which
used a mechanism very very similar to the modern machine.
(22:02):
His mechanism could also stitch forward and backward, which was
a first uh and he applied for a patent after
making a second prototype model, but he was contacted by
the people who owned the Bradshop patent from eighty eight
with a claim that they owned the concept of the
double pointed shuttle that made up part of his machine,
and that claim was completely false, but Wilson couldn't afford
(22:23):
to fight them, and he gave up half of his
claim to A. P. Cline and Edward Lee in November
of eighteen fifty. But after just a few months he
sold them the rest of his interest and retained only
limited rights and he pretty much got shafted in the deal.
He never made any money off of it. He didn't
even I don't think, get full payment for all of
the rights that he sold them, and it was it
(22:44):
was not true their claim in the first place. Yeah,
but he just didn't, you know, he was uh, you know,
relatively modest means inventor. He didn't he couldn't fight a
big business at that point, so he kind of found
what like the most equitable solution, which is to sell
at that point. But they went on to pretty decent
(23:06):
success with it, and they still used his names in
the ads. They actually placed an added Scientific American in
eighteen fifty one that said A B. Wilson's sewing machine,
the best and only practical sewing machine, not larger than
a ladies work box, for the trifling sum of thirty
five dollars. Just they're still making money off his name,
and he's just he's not involved anymore, completely out of
(23:28):
the loop and kind of mistreated. At that point, Elias
Howe decided that he needed to protect his rights and
royalties from all of these inventions that were being sold everywhere,
and so if he could trace his roots back to
his design, he went after them. Before How's work, most
machines were taking all kinds of different approaches to making stitches,
(23:51):
but from Bradshaw on most of the stitching processes were
improvements on the design and his patents number already or
his patent number forties seven fifty from eighteen forty six,
So if he could trace work back to that, he
would jump on it. Yes, And in eighteen fifty, after
watching one of Isaac Singer's sons perform a demonstration of
(24:13):
their machine that they were selling, how contacted Singer about
the infringement on his patent and eventually demanded two thousand
dollars in royalty payment. And at the time, you know,
the Singer family was just starting out selling some machines.
They were like, we don't have that kind of money. Uh.
And he came back later and I was like, well,
you're doing pretty well now and demanded a bigger sum,
And then negotiations did not go well and got really
(24:35):
ugly in a hurry. Singer physically threatened to lie as
How uh. And Singer was known for having a bit
of a hot temper and doing some kind of unkind
dealings and intimidation tactics when it came to his work
with business partners. So between How who felt very wronged
at this point, and Singer, who was pretty aggressive, which
(24:59):
paid off for him in many ways, it really got
ugly in a hurry. But in eighteen fifty two How
found a way to fight them, which is that he
sold half of his interest in his patent to George Bliss,
who manufactured machines that he built this house patent, but
they actually had changed pretty significantly from how his original design.
But even so, the money that How made from this
(25:20):
partnership funded his patent lawsuits, of which there were many,
and he really went after Singer with vigor. He did
not like him. He sued other manufacturers, but the suit
against Singer was the most combative. And after a judgment
though in house favor in a suit that he had
brought against UM, a group called Larow and Blodgett, other
firms started to settle because they kind of saw the
(25:43):
turning of the tide and that probably other judgments were
going to fall in house favors. So a lot of
firms were just like, how can we work this out
out of court? Ye? Basically, now that he had the
money to do it, he was winning. Yes. In eighteen
fifty three, as suits were beginning to be settled, How
started selling his royalty licenses. He sold them to a
lot of different groups UM along with his brother. Uh.
(26:09):
These licenses let manufacturers use any part of the How
patent in their machines, and some of them were stamped
with his name and patent information. Uh. Some have been
incorrectly identified as house machines when they really weren't. And
his brother, also manufacturing machines at this time, was pretty
successful at it. So we're we really have two big
(26:29):
players at this point, How and all the people he
sold his royalty licenses to and Singer. Yes. And then
in July eighteen fifty three, two advertisements ran on the
same page of the New York Daily Tribune. I will
read the first one. It says, the sewing machine. It
has been recently decided by the United States Court that
(26:52):
Elias how Jr. Of number three oh five Broadway, was
the originator of the sewing machines now extensively used. Call
it his office, and see forty of them in constant
use upon cloth, leather, et cetera, and judge for yourselves
as to their practicality. Also see a certified copy from
the records of the United States Courts of the injunction
against Singers Machine so called, which is conclusive. You that
(27:15):
want sewing machines be cautious how you purchase them of
others than him or those licensed under him, else the
law will compel you to pay twice over. So at
that point there was in an injunction against singers machine.
It was kind of like being put on hold, but
the suit had not settled yet. And then there is
(27:35):
the other ad that ran, which is the Singer ad.
The singer ad said sewing machines. For the last two years,
Elias how Junior of Massachusetts has been threatening suits and
injunctions against all the world who make, use or sell
sewing machines. We have sold many machines, are selling them rapidly,
and have good right to sell them. The public do
(27:56):
not acknowledge Mr Howe's pretensions, and for the best reasons.
One machines made according to how It's pattern are of
no practical use. He tried several years without being to
being able to introduce one two. It is not notorious,
especially in New York, that how was not the original
inventor of the machine combining the needle and shuttle, and
(28:16):
that his claim to that is not valid. Finally, we
make and sell the best sewing machines. It all sounds
so polite, but it's so snarky. It's really snarky, and
it's so different from what we think of and ads
today that it's not at all what you would expect
to see with two companies that are in in competition
(28:37):
with one another. Uh. And How went after Singer for
libel because you know, Singer at that point was not
just saying that they were selling machines, but that how
was wrong and that he didn't invent these things, and
these were all, you know, part of a an ongoing
legal battle, so they kind of were really playing fast
and loose with language. You'll notice that Houses very careful
(28:59):
to only say things that are accurate and true, and like,
come and see the certificate we have from the government.
But not at no point does he say, you know,
and Singers an idiot, or that he he's trying to
steal ideas like he It's very carefully worded, whereas Singers
is a little more lusty. Singers is like, this guy
(29:19):
is a liar and he's stupid. Yeah, so that's why
how I went after Singer for Liabel and the New
York Daily Tribune as well. There is also a story
about Scientific American kind of printing there, like okay, the
libel thing against the papers a little silly, you guys,
Like they kind of would post these opinions on the
state of affairs periodically, which is kind of interesting. Singer
(29:41):
kind of went on a personal crusade to discredit How's
claim to rites on the selling machine. He would seek
out machines and inventors that predated How's work to try
to prove that what How did was not original. He
went to Europe and even China, and the problem was
the wording of how it is patent. He had patented
(30:02):
the combination of the shuttle and the I pointed beatle,
not just the invention of a particular element of the machine.
So his patent claim was pretty accurate. Nobody had patented
that process. All these different pieces of it had been patented,
but not all put together correct. So eventually Singer even
colluded with Walter Hunt, remember him from earlier on. He
(30:26):
made a machine and never patented it. He uh. He
brought in engineer William Whiting. Singer did to help resurrect
Hunt's design because Hunt apparently found old pieces of the
machine like in an attic, but couldn't actually get them
all together and working anymore. He couldn't quite remember how
it all went, but so this engineer assisted him. And
then Hunt attempted to file for patent on his eighteen
(30:47):
thirty four invention to establish that he and not Elias
how had in fact invented the sewing machine. Again, the
Scientific American kind of made their opinion known. They published
a rather scathing commentary on Hunt's assertions, calling them quote
rusty claims uh, and a trial at the patent office followed,
and after hundreds of pages of testimony, like Singer found
(31:10):
everybody he could to kind of feed Hunt's case because
he really wanted to take down How any way he could. Uh.
There were hundreds and hundreds of pages in a long
drawn out trial, but pattent Commissioner Charles Mason ruled in
favor of How on eight fifty four, and he said
the Mason said that Hunt's loss was due in part
(31:30):
to the eighteen years he sat on his design. Uh
and Hunt actually appealed to the Circuit Court of the
District of Columbia, claiming that Mason didn't really have the
authority to make such a ruling, but Mason's ruling was
upheld by the court. So, spurred by the success of
this decision, and still in a big fight with Singer,
How decided that the next thing he would do was
(31:52):
file suits against every establishment selling Singer machines in Boston
and asked for preliminary injunctions to shut down those say
Uh Hunt's previous invention was invoked by those named in
the suits, claiming, no, no, there's still some doubt, even
though there had been a ruling already as to whether
or not How really had the rights to all of
the machines being sold, and so they tried to you know,
(32:15):
they were dredging up that case that had already been decided.
But the judge in the matter still deemed House patents
infringed upon and he found in House favor. So the
Boston defendants, who were now in some serious business trouble,
they had had their business basically shut down, they turned
around and filed suits against Singer for basically kind of
(32:36):
dragging them into this mess and giving them patents and
machines that they really had no legal right to sell.
Singer and How eventually settled their suit, and they announced
they had done so in Scientific American in August of
eighteen fifty four, which should have settled the matter, but
it did not at all. The piece did not last
(32:58):
for very long. Now that he was in control of
the sewing machine industry, How started working on improvements to
his own machine, but this resulted in a lot of
the companies he had gone after suing him for patent infringement,
since many of them held patents on the basic improvements
that he was trying to implement. There's just no end
to the litigation. There's really not. In eighteen fifty six,
(33:21):
the president of Grover and Baker, which was one of
the companies involved in these suits against How the president's
name was Orlando B. Potter, and he proposed an interesting truce,
a concept which became known as a combination, not to
be confused with the undergarment of the same name, a
patent combination. And he kind of took a step back
and realized, we are all just hurting ourselves at this point.
(33:43):
We are wadded up in litigation all the time, and
we are holding up production and just throwing money in
the legal actions. What we would rather be doing is
making and selling sewing machines. So he started said, let's
do that. Yeah, they all joined forces. Uh Potter's company, How, Wheeler,
(34:03):
Wilson and Company, and Singer all joined forces. They pulled
their patents to make one unified combination patent for sewing
machine and How it was pretty resistant to this idea
at first, because he felt like he was giving up
more than anybody else in order to get this steal together,
but he eventually relented. Um he only agreed to join
the sewing machine combination, which is sometimes called the sewing
(34:26):
machine shot Trust, if the other parties agreed to stipulations,
and those stipulations were pretty astute business moves. One was,
how would get a five dollar royalty on every machine
sold in the US and a dollar for every machine
that was exported to another country. And it's estimated that
between eighteen fifty six, when this deal was struck in
(34:47):
eighteen sixty seven, when house patent expired, he made more
than two million dollars, which is there are several layers
of that's crazy. One of the two million dollars we're
talking about, you know, two million eighteen sixties dollars um
and the fact that he was so invested in all
this litigation when his patent was on the verge of expiring.
I mean, part of this is, of course he had
(35:08):
to do it then because otherwise he would have lost everything.
And then part of it makes me kind of go.
I probably would have thrown up my hands much earlier
when I was getting that close to the expiration of
a patent, But you would have missed out on two
million dollars. I know, I'm a terrible business person, But
in eighteen sixty seven when house patent was up, so
after his eleven years of enjoying all of that money,
coming in. He did request another extension of the patent,
(35:31):
but he was refused and he actually died later that year.
A singer, of course we know, because his name is
still on sewing machines sold all the time. Wasn't astute businessman,
and he really made a name for himself in that industry.
I feel like we should do another podcast on the
Singer family because there is a world of fascination in
the things that happened there. But that's how it eventually settled.
(35:55):
There was a lot of fighting and fighting and clawing,
and then a settlement, and then a little more biting
and fighting and clawing, and then some person that steps
forward and says, this is really stupid. We could all
be making money, so let's go make money now. Yeah.
I'm glad that they finally came to that. Me too,
(36:15):
because sewing machines are awesome. How would I have all
my sewing machines otherwise, you know, how would I have
learned how to make nightgowns and pajamas and things. I
don't know why nightgowns and pajamas are the things that
I thought of, but we know my mom. My mom
taught me how to make easy things I didn't learn
how to put a zipper in until I was much
older and no longer living with my mom. Bustle gowns.
We wouldn't be able to make bustle agowns to look
(36:36):
like we lived in the time when these people were fighting. Yeah. Well,
and it wasn't until we were I was looking at
your outline for the podcast that it really dawned on
me how similar umbrellas and corsets are to one another.
I kind of had that moment as well, where I
was like, oh, yeah, there's a casing and then a
firm element that goes through it. Yeah, it does make
total it's all kind of stretched tight together over frame.
Like that's really They're the same thing, just in a
(36:58):
different orientation, different shapes. So I believe you have some
listener mail for us. Uh, the first one, I won't
read the whole email, but it is from our listener
Alan and he points out boo boo. When we were
doing the Elswear Engine episode, at one point I misspoken.
I said eighteen ninety three when I should have said
eighteen sixty three regarding I Believe the Battle of Helena,
(37:18):
and it's because I typed it wrong. Because my brain
sometimes rotates those new balls because they look so similar.
So my apologies to anyone who got confused and went, wait,
we jumped thirty years because we didn't uh. The other
email that I have is from our listeners, Zoe, and
she says, dear ladies. The story of the kitten wedding
from the Taxidermy podcast reminded me of a challenge my
(37:39):
writing teacher once posted to my school's creative writing club.
For some reason, a good proportion of stories and poems
that we come up with are quite dark. Eventually, my
teacher got so fed up with the angsty, sob stories
that he challenged us to write the puppy wedding. The
main guideline was that no animals were to be harmed
in the telling of the story. No one, as of yet,
has successfully completed the challenge. Maybe if we change it
(38:01):
to kittens, we'll have better luck. Keep up with good work.
Thank you, Zoe. That's really cute. I should also point
out several people have written us about We mentioned at
the end of the tax Germy podcast that there aren't
that many movies about taxidermy, and several people mentioned Dinner
for Schmucks, which does include some taxidermy very similar to
Walter Potter's work, and I had completely forgotten about it,
(38:21):
So thank you to all of them. If you would
like to write to us, you may absolutely do so.
That email address is History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
You can also hook up with us on Twitter at
misst in history or at Facebook at facebook dot com
slash history Class stuff. If you want to learn more
about what we have talked about today and get some
really good visuals on how these machines we've been talking
(38:42):
about and trying to describe actually work, you can go
to our website and type in sewing in the search
bar and you will actually get how sewing machines work.
And that article has some cool animated illustrations that will
show you exactly how threads pass uh back and forth
using a shuttle in with a chain stitch. And you
can look at that and almost anything else on our website,
(39:02):
which is how Stuff Works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
Works dot com. M This episode of Stuff You Missed
(39:34):
in History Class is brought to you by Audible
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.