Other patents, of more or less value, were obtained, but not yet had a sewing machine of any practical working value been produced. Machines had been made by hundreds, factories had been built for their manufacture, territorial rights had been sold for machines that contained more or less merit, but which would not and could not do continuous stitching. The idea of a successful substitute for woman’s deft fingers at sewing had come to be regarded much as the member of Parliament viewed the project of an ocean steamship, when he offered to “_eat_ the first ship that should cross the Atlantic by steam!” The sewing machine had bitterly disappointed those who purchased it for use in the household; it had bankrupted those who sought to manufacture; it had turned to ashes upon the lips of those who bought territorial rights. If any one had profited by it, it was the vendor of territorial rights. Indeed, a sewing machine patentee named Blodgett told Singer he was an idiot for presuming to make sewing machines to _sell_. They would not work, and the only money to be made out of the business was in “selling territorial rights.” Deep-seated distrust pervaded the public mind, and well-deserved odium had settled upon the entire invention. Such was the state of affairs when Isaac M. Singer turned his versatile mind towards the Sewing Machine. CHAPTER III. THE FIRST SINGER MACHINE. The humble origin of the first practically successful sewing machine was told by Mr. Singer himself a few years before his death. We reproduce the interesting narrative in his own language: “My attention was first directed to sewing machines late in August, 1850. I then saw in Boston some Blodgett sewing machines, which Mr. Orson C. Phelps was employed to keep in running order. I had then patented a carving machine, and Phelps, I think, suggested that if I could make the sewing machine practical I should make money. “Considering the matter over night, I became satisfied I could make them practically applicable to all kinds of work, and the next day showed Phelps and George B. Zeiber a rough sketch of the machine I proposed to build. It contained a table to support the cloth horizontally, instead of a feed-bar from which it was suspended vertically in the Blodgett machine, a vertical presser-foot to hold the cloth, and an arm to hold the presser-foot and needle bar over the table. “I explained to them how the work was to be fed over the table and under the presser-foot, by a wheel having short pins on its periphery, projecting through a slot in the table, so that the work would be automatically caught, fed, and freed from the pins, in place of attaching and detaching the work to and from the baster-plate by hand, as was necessary in the Blodgett machine.