of a rebuilt Hunt machine (fig. 9) appeared in an article in the Sewing Machine News in 1881.[23] The important element in the Hunt invention was an eye-pointed needle working in combination with a shuttle carrying a second thread. Future inventors were thus no longer hampered by the erroneous idea that the sewing machine must imitate the human hands and fingers. Though Hunt’s machine stitched short, straight seams with speed and accuracy, it could not sew curved or angular work. Its stitching was not continuous, but had to be reset at the end of a short run. The validity of Hunt’s claim as the inventor of the lockstitch and the prescribed method of making it was argued many times, especially during the Elias Howe patent suits of the 1850s. The decision against Hunt was not a question of invention,[24] but one of right to ownership or control. Hunt did little to promote his sewing machine and sold it together with the right to patent to George A. Arrowsmith.

Figure 10.—Madersperger’s 1839 sewing machine. Madersperger’s machine consisted of two major parts: the frame, which held the material, and the stitching mechanism, called the hand. The hand shown here is an original model. (Photo courtesy of Technisches Museum für Industrie und Gewerbe, Vienna.)

For over fifteen years, from the mid-1830s to the early 1850s, the machine dropped out of sight. When the sewing-machine litigation developed in the 1850s, the I. M. Singer company searched out the Hunt machine, had the inventor rebuild one,[25] and attempted to use this to break the Howe patent. The plan did not work. The Honorable Charles Mason, Patent Commissioner, reported:

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.”

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.