THE SINGLE-THREAD SEWING MACHINE
The single-thread machine was invented by a Virginia farmer who had never seen a sewing machine. James E. A. Gibbs had seen a picture of a sewing machine and, unaware of the fact that there was a shuttle carrying a second thread on the rear, or under side of the cloth, fell to puzzling over the problem of what happened to the thread carried by the needle through the cloth. Somehow, it seemed to him, the loop of thread must be held until the next stitch carried another loop of thread through it, thus forming a chain stitch. This led him to invent an ingenious revolving hook. With infinite patience he whittled out a model of his invention, and it is this hook that is the outstanding feature of the Wilcox and Gibbs machine.