ELIAS HOWE, INVENTOR OF THE SEWING MACHINE
ELIAS HOWE
140. A Time-Saving Invention. Elias Howe was a poor boy who won great riches through his invention, but spent most of his years in a long, dreary struggle with poverty.
Elias was born in Massachusetts in 1819. His father was a poor man. He worked in his father's mill and then in the cotton mills of New England until he came to have a thorough knowledge of machinery. When he was twenty-four he began his great invention, the sewing machine.
Sewing machines using a chain stitch had already been invented in England and France, but a chain stitch ravels easily. Howe invented a lock stitch machine. Like earlier machines, it had a needle with an eye in its point to bring a loop of thread through the cloth. In chain stitching the needle at the next stitch passes through this loop. Howe instead passed a shuttle carrying a second thread through the loop. This made a firm lock stitch.
HOWE'S FIRST SEWING MACHINE
Howe tried to get tailors to buy his machine. He proved that it would sew seven times as fast as the best needleworkers. But they were afraid it would take work away from their men, and would have nothing to do with it.
After patenting his machine, Howe took it to England, but there he remained as poor and unknown as before.