Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Now also appeared “the Singer,” consisting chiefly of the invention of T. M. Singer. He improved the operation of the needle bar, devised a roughened feed wheel, as a substitute for Wilson’s serrated bar, introduced a spring presser foot, alongside the needle, to hold the work down in proper position while permitting it to be moved forward or in any other direction. A “friction pad” was also placed between the cloth seam and the spool, to prevent the thread from kinking or twisting under the point of the descending needle. He was the first to give the shuttle an additional forward movement after it had once stopped, to draw the stitch tight,—such operation being taken while the feed moved the cloth in the reverse direction, and while, the needle completed its upward motion, so that the two threads were simultaneously drawn, and finally a spring guide upon the shuttle to control the slack of the thread, and prevent its catching by the needle.

By reason of these improvements it is thought by many that Singer was the first to furnish the people with a successful operating and practical sewing machine. At any rate, the world at last so highly appreciated his machines, that it lifted him from poverty to an estate which was valued at between eight and ten millions of dollars at the time of his death in 1875. Singer was also the first to invent the “ruffler,” a machine for ruffling or gathering cloth, and a device which laid an embroidering thread upon the surface of the cloth under the needle thread.

The “Grover and Baker” another celebrated American machine, was invented by William O. Grover and William E. Baker in 1851. By certain changes they made in the thread carrier and connections, they were enabled to make a double looped stitch. This required more thread, but the stitch made was unexcelled in strength.

And so the work went on, from step to step, and from the completion of one machine after another, until when the Centennial Exhibition came to be held in Philadelphia in 1876, a fine array of excellent sewing machines was had, from the United States, principally, but also those of inventors and manufacturers in Great Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Denmark.

Up to that time about twenty-two hundred patents had been granted in the United States, all of which, with the exception of a very few, were for inventions made within the preceding quarter of a century. And during the last quarter of the century about five thousand more United States patents have been issued for devices in this art. This number includes many, of course, to inventors of other countries. When it is remembered that these patents were issued only after an examination in each case as to its novelty, and although slight as may have been the changes or additions, yet substantially different they must have been in nearly all respects, it may to some extent be realized how great and incessant has been the exercise of invention in this useful class of machines.

On this point of the exercise of invention in sewing machines, as well as on some others growing out of the subject, Knight, writing in his Mechanical Dictionary, about twenty years ago, remarks: “If required to name the three subjects on which the most extraordinary versatility of invention has been expended, the answer would be without hesitation, the sewing machine, reaping machine and breech-loading firearm. Each of these has thousands of patents, and although each is the growth of the last forty years, it is only during the last twenty-five years that they have filled any notable place in the world. It was then only by a combination of talents that any of these three important inventions was enabled to achieve remarkable success. The sewing machine previous to 1851, made without the admirable division of labour which is a feature in all well conducted factories, was hard to make, and comparatively hard to run. The system of assembling, first introduced in the artillery service of France by General Gribeauval in 1765 and brought to proximate perfection by Colonel Colt in the manufacture of the revolver at Hartford, Connecticut, has economised material and time, improved the quality as well as cheapened the product. There is to-day, and in fact has been for some years, more actual invention in the special machines for making sewing machines than in the machines themselves. The assembling system, that is, making the component parts of an article in distinct pieces of pattern, so as to be interchangeable, and the putting them together, is the only system of order. How else should the Providence Tool Company execute their order for 600,000 rifles for the Turkish Government? How otherwise could the Champion Harvesting Machine Company of Springfield, Ohio, turn out an equipped machine every four minutes each working day of ten hours? Or, to draw the illustration from the subject in hand, how by any other than the nicest arrangement of detail can the Singer Sewing Machine Company make 6,000 machines per week at Elizabethport, New Jersey?”

When sewing machines were so far completed as to be easily run by a hand crank, or treadle, the application of power to run them singly, or in series, and to run machines of a larger and more powerful description, soon naturally followed—so that garment-making factories of all kinds, whether of cloth or leather, have been established in many countries—in which steam or electric power is utilised as the motor, and thus human strain and labour saved, while the amount of production is increased.

No radical changes in the principle or mode of operation of sewing machines have been made in the last twenty-five years; but the efforts of inventors have been directed to improve the previously established types, and to devise attachments of all kinds, by the aid of which anything that can be sewed, can be sewed upon a machine. Tucking, ruffling, braiding, cording, hemming, turning, plaiting, gaging, and other attachment devices are numerous. Inventors have rivalled one another in originating new forms of stitches. About seventy-five distinct stitches have been devised, each of which must of course be produced by a change in mechanism.

When sewing machines were in their infancy, and confined to sewing straight seams and other plain sewing, it was predicted that it was not possible to take from the hands of women the making of fine embroidery from intricate patterns, or the working of button-holes, and the destruction of the quilting party was not apprehended. Nor was it expected that human hands could be dispensed with in the cutting out of garments. And yet these things have followed. Machines, by a beautiful but complex system of needles, working to some extent on the Jacquard system of perforated card boards, and by the help of pneumatic or electrical power, will work out on most delicate cloths embroidery of exquisite patterns.

The button-hole machines will take the garment, cut the button-hole at the desired point, and either, as in one class of machines, by moving the fabric about the stitch-forming mechanism, or, as in another class, moving the stitch-forming mechanism about the button-hole, complete the delicate task in the nicest and most effective manner.