The Invention of the Sewing MachineCooper, Grace Rogers
History
The Invention of the Sewing Machine
Cooper, Grace Rogers
Sewing machines -- History
When the first inventor allows his discovery to slumber for
eighteen years, with no probability of its ever being brought into
useful activity, and when it is only resurrected to supplant and
strangle an invention which has been given to the public, and which
has been made practically useful, all reasonable presumption should
be in favor of the inventor who has been the means of conferring
the real benefit upon the world.[26]
Hunt's machine was an invention of the 1830s, but only because of the
patent litigation was it ever heard of again.
During the time that a potentially successful sewing machine was being
invented and forgotten in America, Josef Madersperger of Austria made a
second attempt to solve the mechanical stitching problem. In 1839 he
received a second patent on a machine entirely different from his 1814
effort. It was similar to Hunt's in that it used an eye-pointed needle
and passed a thread through the loop of the needle-thread--the thread
carried by the needle--to lock the stitch. Madersperger's machine was a
multiple-needle quilting machine. The threaded needles penetrated the
fabric from below and were retracted, leaving the loops on the surface.
A thread was drawn through the loops to produce what the inventor termed
a chain. The first two stitches were twisted before insertion into the
next two, producing a type of twisted lockstitch. The mechanism for
feeding the cloth was faulty, however, and the inventor himself stated
in the specifications that much remained to perfect and simplify it
before its general application. (This machine was illustrated [fig. 10]
in the _Sewing Machine Times_, October 25, 1907, and mistakenly referred
to as the 1814 model.) Madersperger realized no financial gain from
either venture and died in a poorhouse in 1850.
The first efforts of the 1840s reflected the work of the earlier years.
In England, Edward Newton and Thomas Archbold invented and patented a
machine on May 4, 1841, for tambouring or ornamenting the backs of
gloves. Their machine used a hook on the upper surface to catch the loop
of thread, but an eye-pointed needle from underneath was used to carry
the thread up through the fabric. The machine was designed to use three
needles for three rows of chainstitching, if required. Although the
machine was capable of stitching two fabrics together, it was never
contemplated as a sewing machine in the present use of the term. Their
British patent 8,948 stated it was for "improvements in producing
ornamental or tambour work in the manufacture of gloves."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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