About the same time, Josef Madersperger, a tailor in Vienna, Austria, invented a sewing machine, which was illustrated (fig. 7) and described in a 15-page pamphlet published about 1816.[11] On May 12, 1817, a Vienna newspaper wrote of the Madersperger machine: "The approbation which his machine received everywhere has induced his Royal Imperial Majesty, in the year 1814, to give to the inventor an exclusive privilege [patent] which has already been mentioned before in these papers."[12] Madersperger's 1814 machine stitched straight or curving lines. His second machine stitched small semicircles, as shown in the illustration, and also small circles, egg-shaped figures, and angles of various degrees. The machine, acclaimed by the art experts, must therefore have been intended for embroidery stitching. From the contemporary descriptions and the illustration, the machine is judged to have made a couched stitch--one thread was laid on the surface of the fabric and stitched in place with a short thread carried by a two-pointed needle of the type invented by Weisenthal. Two fabrics could have been stitched together, but not in the manner required for tailoring. The machine must have had many deficiencies in the tension adjustment, feed, and related mechanical operations, for despite the published wishes for success the inventor did not put the machine into practical operation.[13] Years later Madersperger again attempted to invent a sewing machine using a different stitch (see p. 13). [Illustration: Figure 8.--AN ENGRAVING OF THIMONNIER and his sewing machine of 1830, from _Sewing Machine News_, 1880. (Smithsonian photo 10569-C.)] A story persists that about 1818-1819 a machine that formed a backstitch, identical to the one used in hand sewing, was invented in Monkton, Vermont. The earliest record of this machine that this author has found was in the second or 1867 edition of _Eighty Years of Progress of the United States_; the machine is not mentioned in the earlier edition. The writer of the article on sewing machines states that John Knowles invented and constructed a sewing machine, which used a single thread and a two-pointed needle with the eye in the middle to form the backstitch. This information must have come to light after the first edition was published, but from where and by whom is not known. Other sources state that two men, Adams and Dodge, produced this machine in Monkton.[14] While still others credit the Reverend John Adam Dodge, assisted by a mechanic by the name of John Knowles, with the same invention in the same location.[15] Vermont historical societies have been unable to identify the men named or to verify the story of the invention.[16] The importance of the credibility of this story, if proved, rests in the fact that it represents the first effort in the United States to produce a mechanical stitching device. 1820-1845