Though the Grover and Baker company manufactured machines using a shuttle and producing the more common lockstitch, both under royalty in their own name and also for other smaller companies, Potter was convinced that the Grover and Baker stitch was the one that eventually would be used in both family and commercial machines. He, as president, directed the efforts of the company to that end. When the basic patents held by the “Sewing-Machine Combination” (discussed on pp. 41-42) began to run out in the mid-1870s, dissolving its purpose and lowering the selling price of sewing machines, the Grover and Baker company began a systematic curtailing of expenses and closing of branch offices. All the patents held by the company and the business itself were sold to another company.[63] But the members of the Grover and Baker company fared well financially by the strategic move.
The Grover and Baker machine and its unique stitch did not have a great influence on the overall development of the mechanics of machine sewing. The merits of a double-looped stitch—its elasticity and the taking of both threads from commercial spools—were outweighed by the bulkiness of the seam and its consumption of three times as much thread as the lockstitch required. Machines making a similar type of stitch have continued in limited use in the manufacture of knit goods and other products requiring an elastic seam. But, more importantly, Grover and Baker’s astute Orlando B. Potter placed their names in the annals of sewing-machine history by his work in forming the “Combination,” believed to be the first “trust” of any prominence.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] See biographical sketch, pp. 138-141.
[34] In the Matter of the Application of Elias Howe, Jr. for an Extension of His Sewing Machine Patent Dated September 10, 1846, New York, 1860, with attachments A and B, U.S. Patent Office. [L.C. call no. TJ 1512.H6265]
[35] It is interesting to note that when William Thomas applied for the British patent of the Howe machine (issued Dec. 1, 1846), the courts would not allow the claim for the combination of the eye-pointed needle and shuttle to form a stitch, due to the Fisher and Gibbons patent of 1844. For more details on Howe’s years in England see his biographical sketch, pp. 138-141.
[36] The machine referred to as the London Sewing Machine is the British patent of the Thimonnier machine. This patent was applied for by Jean Marie Magnin and was published by Newton’s London Journal, vol. 39, p. 317, as Magnin’s invention.
[37] The exact date is not known; however, it was prior to 1856 as the patent was included in the sewing-machine patent pool formed that year.
[38] James Parton, History of the Sewing Machine, p. 12, (originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, May 1867), later reprinted by the Howe Machine Company as a separate.
[39] Sewing Machine Times (Feb. 25, 1907), vol. 17, no. 382, p. 1, “His [Bonata’s] shop was on Gold Street, New York, near the Bartholf shop, where Howe was building some of his early machines.”