The next sewing machine was that of Thomas Saint, of England, who obtained a patent July 17, 1790. This man seems to have understood, with remarkable clearness, the main essential features of the invention, for his machine had a horizontal cloth-plate, an overhanging arm, at the end of which was a needle working vertically, and a “feed” working automatically between the stitches. These features have been preserved in every successful machine ever made. The needle was notched at the lower end, to push the thread through the goods, which had been previously punctured by an awl. As the needle passed upwards, leaving a loop in the thread, a loop-check caught the loop and held it until the needle descended again, enchaining the thread of the new loop in the former one. In 1804 an Englishman, named Duncan, made a chain-stitch machine, having a number of hooked needles, which passed through the cloth and were supplied with thread beneath the goods by a feeding needle, whereupon the needles receded, each drawing a loop through the loop previously drawn by itself through the cloth. In 1818 Rev. John A. Dodge, of Monkton, Vt., invented, and, with the assistance of John Knowles, an ingenious mechanic, constructed a machine having the double-pointed needle and eye at mid-length. It made a stitch identical with the ordinary “back-stitch,” and was furnished with an automatic device for “feeding” the work. Mr. Dodge never applied for a patent, nor attempted to manufacture any more machines, because of the great pressure upon his time as a pastor, and further on account of the bitter opposition of journeymen tailors, who denounced the machine as an invasion of their rights. The first patent issued in America for a sewing machine was that of a man named Lye, in the year 1826. Lye’s device could hardly have contained any useful or striking features, for when the fire of 1836 destroyed all the Patent Office Records, it consumed all that remained of this machine. In the year 1830 Barthlemy Thimmonnier, a Parisian, invented a machine which operated much as Saint’s did, except that the needle was crocheted, and, descending through the goods, pulled up a lower thread and formed a series of loops upon the upper side of the goods. Eighty of these machines, made of wood, are said to have been used at one time in Paris, making army clothing; but though patented in France in August, 1848, and in the United States September 3, 1850, it had too many defects to become anything more than an important step in the onward march of this great invention. [Illustration: BIRD’S EYE VIEW OF THE GREAT SINGER FACTORY. ]