The earliest American patent specifically recorded as a sewing machine was U.S. patent 2,466, issued to John J. Greenough on February 21, 1842. His machine was a short-thread model that made both the running stitch and the backstitch. It used the two-pointed needle, with eye at mid-length, which was passed back and forth through the material by means of a pair of pincers on each side of the seam. The pincers opened and closed automatically. The material to be sewn was held in clamps which moved it forward between the pincers to form a running stitch or moved it alternately backward and forward to produce a backstitch. The clamps were attached to a rack that automatically fed the material at a predetermined rate according to the length of stitch required. Since the machine was designed for leather or other hard material, the needle was preceded by an awl, which pierced a hole. The machine had a weight to draw out the thread and a stop-motion to stop the machinery when a thread broke or became too short. The needle was threaded with a short length of thread and required frequent refilling. Only straight seams could be stitched. The feed was continuous to the length of the rack bar; then it had to be reset. The motions were all obtained from the revolution of a crank. It is not believed that any machines, other than the patent model (fig. 11), were ever made. Little is known of Greenough other than his name. [Illustration: Figure 11.--GREENOUGH'S PATENT MODEL, 1842. (Smithsonian photo 45525-G.)] In the succeeding year, on March 4, 1843, Benjamin W. Bean received the second American sewing-machine patent, U.S. patent 2,982. Like Greenough's, this machine made a running stitch, but by a different method. In Bean's machine the fabric was fed between the teeth of a series of gears. Held in a groove in the gears was a peculiarly shaped needle bent in two places to permit it to be held in place by the gears and with a point at one end and the eye at the opposite end, as in a common hand needle. The action of the gears caused the fabric to be forced onto and through the threaded needle. Indefinite straight seams could be stitched as the fabric was continuously forced off the needle by the turning gears (fig. 12). A screw clamp held the machine to a table or other work surface. Machines of this and similar types reportedly had some limited usage in the dyeing and bleaching mills,[27] where lengths of fabric were stitched together before processing. Improved versions of Bean's machine were to be patented in subsequent years in England and America. The same principle was also used in home machines two decades later. The third sewing-machine patent on record in the United States Patent Office is patent 3,389 issued on December 27, 1843, to George H. Corliss, better remembered as the inventor and manufacturer of the Corliss steam engine. It was his interest in the sewing machine, however, that eventually directed his attention to the steam engine.