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قراءة كتاب The Invention of the Sewing Machine
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Preface
It had no instrument panel with push-button controls. It was not operated electronically or jet-propelled. But to many 19th-century people the sewing machine was probably as awe-inspiring as a space capsule is to their 20th-century descendants. It was expensive, but, considering the work it could do and the time it could save, the cost was more than justified. The sewing machine became the first widely advertised consumer appliance, pioneered installment buying and patent pooling, and revolutionized the ready-made clothing industry. It also weathered the protests of those who feared the new machine was a threat to their livelihood.
The practical sewing machine is not the result of one man’s genius, but rather the culmination of a century of thought, work, trials, failures, and partial successes of a long list of inventors. History is too quick to credit one or two men for an important invention and to forget the work that preceded and prodded each man to contribute his share. It is no discredit to Howe to state that he did not invent the sewing machine. Howe’s work with the sewing machine was important, and he did patent certain improvements, but his work was one step along the way. It is for the reader to decide whether it was the turning point.
Since the sewing machine has been considered by some as one of the most important inventions of 19th-century America, of equal importance to this story of the invention is the history of the sewing machine’s development into a practical, popular commodity. Since many new companies blossomed overnight to manufacture this very salable item, a catalog list of more than one hundred and fifty of these 19th-century companies is included in this study. Still, the list is probably incomplete. Many of the companies remained in business a very short time or kept their activities a secret to avoid payment of royalties to patent holders. Evidence of these companies is difficult to find. It is hoped that additional information will come to light as a result of this initial attempt to list and date known companies. The dating of individual machines based on their serial numbers is also a difficult task. Individual company records of this type have not survived; however, using the commercial machines in the patent collection, for which we know one limiting date—the date the machine was deposited at the patent office—and using the records that have survived, an estimated date based on the serial number can be established for many of the better known machines.
Acknowledgments
I am greatly indebted to the late Dr. Frederick Lewton, whose interest in the history of the sewing machine initiated the collecting of information about it for the Smithsonian Institution’s Division of Textiles archives and whose out-of-print booklet “A Servant in the House” prompted the writing of this work. I would also like to thank Mr. Bogart Thompson of the Singer Manufacturing Company for his cooperation in arranging for the gift of an excellent collection of 19th-century sewing machines to the Smithsonian and for allowing me to use the Singer historical files. Acknowledgment is also made of the cooperation extended by The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village for permitting me to study their collection of old sewing machines.
Grace Rogers Cooper
Chapter One
Figure 1.—After almost a century of attempts to invent a machine that would sew, the practical sewing machine evolved in the mid-19th century. This elegant, carpeted salesroom of the 1870s, with fashionable ladies and gentlemen scanning the latest model sewing machines, reflects the pinnacle reached by the new industry in just a few decades. This example, one of many of its type, is the Wheeler and Wilson sewing-machine offices and salesroom, No. 44 Fourteenth Street, Union Square, New York City. From The Daily Graphic, New York City, December 29, 1874. (Smithsonian photo 48091-A.)
Early Efforts
To 1800
For thousands of years, the only means of stitching two pieces of fabric together had been with a common needle and a length of thread. The thread might be of silk, flax, wool, sinew, or other fibrous material. The needle, whether of bone, silver, bronze, steel, or some other metal, was always the same in design—a thin shaft with a point at one end and a hole or eye for receiving the thread at the other end. Simple as it was, the common needle (fig. 2) with its thread-carrying eye had been an ingenious improvement over the sharp bone, stick, or other object used to pierce a hole through which a lacing then had to be passed.[1] In addition to utilitarian stitching for such things as the making of garments and household furnishings, the needle was also used for decorative stitching, commonly called embroidery. And it was for this purpose that the needle, the seemingly perfect tool that defied improvement, was first altered for ease of stitching and to increase production.
One of the forms that the needle took in the process of adaptation was that of the fine steel hook. Called an aguja in Spain, the hook was used in making a type of lace known as punto de aguja. During the 17th century after the introduction of chainstitch embroideries from India, this hook was used to produce chainstitch designs on a net ground.[2] The stitch and the fine hook to make it were especially adaptable to this work. By the 18th century the hook had been reduced to needle size and inserted into a handle, and was used to chainstitch-embroider woven fabrics.[3] In France the hook was called a crochet and was sharpened to a point for easy entry into the