Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Quilting machines have their own bees, consisting of a guide which regulates the spaces between the seams, and adjusts them to any width, and a single needle, or gang of needles, the latter under the control of cams which force the needles to quilt certain desired patterns.

And as to cutting, it is only necessary to place the number of pieces of fabric desired to be cut in cutting dies, or upon a table, and over them an “over-board” cutter, which comprises a reciprocating band-saw, or a rotary knife, all quick, keen and delicate, in an apparatus guided by hand, in order to produce in the operation a great pile of the parts formerly so slowly produced, one at a time, by scissors or shears.

If men were contented with that single useful garment of some savages, a blanket with a slit cut in it for the passage of the head and neck, not only would a vast portion of the joys and sorrows of social philosophy have been avoided, but an immense strain and trouble on the part of inventors of the century would have been obviated.

But man’s propensity for wearing clothes has led to the invention of every variety of tools for making them faster, cheaper, and better.

No machine has yet been invented that will take the place of the deft fingers of women in certain lines of ornamentation, as in final completion and trimming of their hats. The airy and erratic demands of fashion are too nimble to be supplied by the slow processes of machinery, although the crude ground-work, the frame, has been shaped, moulded and sewed by machines; and women themselves have invented and patented bonnet frames and patterns.

But no such difficulty in invention has occurred in hat-making for men. From the treating and cutting of the raw material, from the outer bound edge, and the band about the body, to the tip of the crown, a machine may be found for performing each separate step. Especially is this the case with the hard felt and the high silk hats.

Seventy-five years ago the making of hats was by hand processes. Now in all hat factories machines are employed, and the ingenuity displayed in the construction of some of them is marvellous. It is exceedingly difficult to find many of the old hand implements existing even as relics.

Wool and fur each has its special machines for turning it into a hat. The operations of cleaning and preparing the material, felting the fur, when fur is used, shaping the hat body, and then the brim, washing, dying, hardening and stiffening it, stretching, smoothing, finishing, sizing, lining, trimming, all are now done by machines devised for each special purpose. A description of these processes would be interesting, but even in an abbreviated form would fill a book.

The wonderful things done in the manufacture of boots and shoes and rubber goods will be referred to in subsequent chapters.

Although it was old from time immemorial to colour cotton goods, and the calico power printing cylinder was invented and introduced into England in the latter part of the 18th century and began to turn out at once immense quantities of decorated calicoes and chintz, yet figured woven goods were a novelty sixty years ago.