Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Thimonnier made quite a large number of machines, constructed mostly of wood, and which were used to make army clothing at Paris. They were best adapted to work on leather and in embroidering. They were so far successful as to arouse the jealousy and fear of the workmen and working women, and, as in the case of Hargreaves, Jacquard, and others, a mob broke into his shop, destroyed his machines, ruined his business, and he died penniless in 1857.

In the meantime an English patent, No. 8948, of May 4, 1841, had been issued to Newton and Archbold for a machine for embroidering the backs of gloves, having an eye-pointed needle, worked by a vibrating lever, and adapted to carry a thread through the back of the glove, held on a frame—the frame and glove moving together after each stitch.

The germs of inventions often develop and fructify simultaneously in distant places, without, so far as any one can ascertain, the slightest mutual knowledge or co-operation on the part of the separate inventors. Between 1832 and 1834, while Thimonnier was in the midst of his early struggles in Paris, Walter Hunt was inventing a sewing machine in New York, which he completed at that time and on which he sewed one or two garments. But as it was experimental in form, and Hunt was full of other inventions and schemes, he put it aside, and it probably would never have been heard of had not Elias Howe of Massachusetts, ten years after Hunt had abandoned his invention, but without knowledge of Hunt’s efforts, made the first practical successful sewing machine for commercial purposes the world had ever seen, obtained his patent, and made claims therein which covered not only his special form of improvements, but Hunt’s old device as well.

Howe’s patent was issued September 10, 1846. In that he claimed to be the first and original inventor of “A sewing machine, constructed and operated to form a seam, substantially as described.”

Also “The combination of a needle and a shuttle, or equivalent, and holding surfaces, constructed and operating substantially as described.”

Also “The combination of holding surfaces with a baster plate or equivalent, constructed and operating substantially as described.”

Also “A grooved and eye-pointed needle, constructed and adapted for rapid machine sewing substantially as described.”

When the machine commenced to be a practical success this patent was infringed, and when Howe sued upon it a few years after its issue, it woke up Hunt and all other alleged prior inventors; and all prior patents and publications the world over, relating to sewing machines, were raked up to defeat Howe’s claims.

But the courts, after long deliberation, held that although, so far as Hunt was concerned he had without doubt made a machine in many respects like Howe’s machine, that it had a curved, eye-pointed needle similar to Howe’s operated by a vibrating arm and going through the cloth, a shuttle carrying the thread that passed through the loop made by the needle thread, thus making a lock stitch by drawing it up to one side of the cloth, and that this machine did, to a certain extent, sew, yet that it ended in an experiment, was laid aside, destroyed, and never perfected nor used so as to give to the public the knowledge and benefit of a completed invention, and was not therefore an anticipation in the eye of the law of Howe’s completed, more successful and patented machine.

Public successful use is the fact in many cases which alone establishes the title of an inventor, when all other tests fail. And this is right in one sense, as the laws of all countries in respect to protection by patents for inventions are based upon the primary condition of benefit to society. This benefit is not derived from the inventor who hides his completed invention for years in his closet, or throws it on a dust heap. As to previous patents and publications, some were not published before Howe’s inventions were made, and others were insufficient in showing substantially the same machine and mode of operation. And as to prior use abroad, it was not regarded under the law of his country as competent evidence.