fabric (fig. 3). For stitching, the fabric was held taut on a drum-shaped frame. The hooked needle pierced the fabric, caught the thread from below the surface and pulled a loop to the top. The needle reentered the fabric a stitch-length from the first entry and caught the thread again, pulling a second loop through the first to which it became enchained. This method of embroidery permitted for the first time the use of a continuous length of thread. At this time the chainstitch was used exclusively for decorative embroidery, and from the French name for drum—the shape of the frame that held the fabric—the worked fabric came to be called tambour embroidery. The crochet[4] or small hooked needle soon became known as a tambour needle.

Figure 2.—Primitive needle. Bronze. Egyptian (Roman period, 30 B.C.-A.D. 642). (Smithsonian photo 1379-A.)

In 1755 a new type of needle was invented for producing embroidery stitches. This needle had to pass completely through the fabric two times (a through-and-through motion) for every stitch. The inventor was Charles F. Weisenthal, a German mechanic living in London who was granted British patent 701 for a two-pointed needle (fig. 4). The invention was described in the patent as follows:

It might be argued that Weisenthal had invented the eye-pointed needle, since he was the first inventor to put a point at the end of the needle having the eye. But, since his specifically stated use required the needle to have two points and to be passed completely through the fabric, Weisenthal had no intention of utilizing the very important advantage that the eye-pointed needle provided, that of not requiring the passage of the needle through the fabric as in hand sewing.

While no records can be found to establish that Weisenthal’s patent was put to any commercial use during the inventor’s lifetime, the two-pointed needle with eye at midpoint appeared in several 19th-century sewing-machine inventions.

The earliest of the known mechanical sewing devices produced a chain or tambour stitch, but by an entirely different principle than that used with either needle just described. Although the idea was incorporated into a patent, the machine was entirely overlooked for almost a century as the patent itself was classed under wearing apparel. It was entitled “An Entire New Method of Making and Completing Shoes, Boots, Splatterdashes, Clogs, and Other Articles, by Means of Tools and Machines also Invented by Me for that Purpose, and of Certain Compositions of the Nature of Japan or Varnish, which will be very advantageous in many useful Applications.” This portentously titled British patent 1,764 was issued to an English cabinetmaker, Thomas Saint, on July 17, 1790. Along with accounts of several processes for making various varnish compositions, the patent contains descriptions of three separate machines; the second of these was for “stitching, quilting, or sewing.” Though far from practical, the machine incorporated several features common to a modern sewing machine. It had a horizontal cloth plate or table, an overhanging arm carrying a straight needle, and a continuous supply of thread from a spool. The motion was derived from the rotation of a hand crank on a shaft, which activated cams that produced all the actions of the machine.

One cam operated the forked needle (fig. 5) that pushed the thread through a hole made by a preceding thrust of the awl. The thread was caught by a looper and detained so that it then became enchained in the next loop of thread. The patent described thread tighteners above and below the work and an adjustment to vary the stitches for different kinds of material. Other than the British patent records, no contemporary reference to Saint’s machine has ever been found. The stitching-machine contents of this patent was happened on by accident in 1873.[5] Using the patent description, a Newton Wilson of London attempted to build a model of Saint’s machine in 1874.[6] Wilson found, however, that it was necessary to modify the construction before the machine would stitch at all.

Figure 3.—Tambour needle and frame, showing the method of forming the chainstitch, from the Diderot Encyclopedia of 1763, vol. II, Plates Brodeur, plate II. (Smithsonian photo 43995-C.)

This raised the question whether Saint had built even one machine. Nevertheless, the germ of an idea was there, and had the inventor followed through the sewing machine might have been classed an 18th-century rather than a 19th-century contribution.

Figure 4.—Weisenthal’s two-pointed needle, 1755.

Figure 5.—Saint’s sewing machine, 1790. (Smithsonian photo 42490-A.)

1800-1820

There is no doubt that the successful late-18th-century improvements in spinning and weaving methods, resulting in increased production of fabrics, had a great effect in spurring inventors to ideas of stitching by machinery. Several efforts were made during the first two decades of the 19th century to produce such machines.

On February 14, 1804, a French patent was issued to Thomas Stone and James Henderson for a “new mechanical principle designed to replace handwork in joining the edges of all kinds of flexible material, and particularly applicable to the manufacture of clothing.”[7] The machine used a common needle and made an overcast stitch in the same manner as hand sewing. A pair of jaws or pincers, imitating the action of the fingers, alternately seized and released the needle on each side of the fabric. The pincers were attached to a pair of arms arranged to be moved backward and forward by “any suitable mechanism.”[8] This machine was capable of making curved or angular as well as straight seams, but it