Passing over some minor attempts, the next great development was that of Allen Wilson, who, without having heard either of Howe's or of any other machine, constructed one in 1849, the design of which, he said, he had been meditating for two years. His first machine had original features, however much it may have been anticipated in principle by Howe's patent. In Wilson's second design, a rotary hook was substituted for a two-pointed shuttle, and by other improvements he achieved a greater speed than had been attained by other inventors. Later still, he added the 'four-motion feed,' which is adopted on most of the machines now in general use.
This idea was an elaboration of a principle which seems to have first occurred to the unfortunate Morey. In Morey's machine there was a horizontal bar with short teeth, which caught the fabric and dragged it forward as the stitches were completed. It took nearly thirty years, however, to evolve the perfect 'feed' motion out of Morey's first crude germ.
While Wilson was working away, perfecting his now famous machine, an observing and thoughtful young millwright was employed in a New York factory. One day a sewing-machine was sent in for repairs, and after examining its mechanism, this young man, whose name was Isaac Singer, confidently expressed his belief that he could make a better one. He did not propose either to appropriate or abandon the principle, but to improve upon it. Instead of a curved needle, as in Howe's and Wilson's machines, he adopted a straight one, and gave it a perpendicular instead of a curvular motion. And for propelling the fabric he introduced a wheel, instead of the toothed bar of the Morey design.
It need hardly be said that the Singer machine is now one of the most widely known, and is turned out in countless numbers in enormous factories on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not so well known, perhaps, that Singer, who was a humble millwright in 1850, and who died in 1875, left an estate valued at three millions sterling—all amassed in less than twenty-five years!
The machines of Howe, Wilson, and Singer were on the lock-stitch principle, and the next novelty was the invention of Grover and Baker, who brought out a machine working with two needles and two continuous threads. After this came the Gibbs machine, the story of which may be briefly told.
About the year 1855, James G. Gibbs heard of the Grover and Baker machine, and having a turn for mechanics, began to ponder over how the action described was produced. He got an illustration, but could make nothing of it, and not for a year did he obtain sight of a Singer machine at work. As in the case of Singer with Wilson's machine, so Gibbs thought he could improve on Singer's, and turn out one less ponderous and complicated. He set to work, and in a very short time took out a patent for a new lock-stitch machine. But he was not satisfied with this, and experimented away, with an idea of making a chain-stitch by means of a revolving looper. This idea he eventually put into practical form, and took out a patent for the first chain-stitch sewing-machine.
Since the days of Elias Howe, the number of patents taken out for sewing-machines has been legion—certainly not less than one thousand—and probably no labour-saving appliance has received more attention at the hands both of inventors and of the general public. There is scarcely a household in the land now, however humble, without a sewing-machine of some sort, and in factories and warehouses they are to be numbered by the thousand. Some machinists have directed their ingenuity to the reduction of wear and tear, others to the reduction of noise, others to acceleration of speed, others to appliances for supplying the machine in a variety of ways, others for adapting it to various complicated processes of stitching and embroidering. Some users prefer the lock-stitch, and some the chain-stitch principle, and each system has its peculiar advantages according to the character of the work to be sewn.
A recent development is a combination of both principles in one machine. Mr Edward Kohler patented a machine which will produce either a lock-stitch or a chain-stitch, as may be desired, and an embroidery stitch as well. By a very ingenious contrivance the machinery is altered by the simple movement of a button, and (when the chain-stitch is required) the taking out of the bobbin from the shuttle. If the embroidery stitch is wanted, the button is turned without removing the bobbin, and the lock-stitch and chain-stitch are combined in one new stitch, with which very elaborate effects can be produced. It is said that the Kohler principle can be easily adapted to all, or most, existing machines.