SEWING MACHINES. The basic invention in machine sewing was the double-pointed needle, with the eye in the centre, patented by Charles F. Weisenthal in 1755, with the object of avoiding the necessity for inverting the needle in sewing or em broidering. Many of the features of the sewing machine are dis tinctly specified in a patent secured in England by Thomas Saint in 1790, in which he, inter alia, described a machine for stitching, quilting or sewing. Saint's machine, which appears to have been intended principally for leather work, was fitted with an awl which, working vertically, pierced a hole for the thread. A spindle and projection laid the thread over this hole, and a descending forked needle pressed a loop of thread through it. The loop was caught on the under side by a reciprocating hook; a feed moved the work forward the extent of one stitch; and a second loop was formed by the same motions as the first. It, however, descended within the first, which was thrown off by the hook as it caught the second, and being thus secured and tightened up an ordinary tambour or chain stitch was formed. Had Saint hit on the idea of the eye-pointed needle his machine would have been a complete anticipation of the modern chain stitch machine.
The most important ideas of an eye-pointed needle and a double thread or lock-stitch are strictly of American origin, and that combination was first conceived by Walter Hunt of New York about 1832-34. Hunt constructed a machine having a vibrat
ing arm, at the extremity of which he fixed a curved needle with an eye near its point. By this needle a loop of thread was formed under the cloth to be sewn, and through that loop a thread car ried in an oscillating shuttle was passed, thus making the lock stitch of all ordinary two-thread machines. Hunt's invention was purchased by a blacksmith named Arrowsmith, but no patent was sought, nor was any serious attempt made to draw attention to the invention. After the success of machines based on his two devices was fully established, Hunt in 1853 applied for a patent; but his claim was disallowed on the ground of abandonment. The most important feature in Hunt's invention—the eye-pointed needle—was first patented in the United Kingdom by Newton and Archbold in 1841, in connection with glove-stitching.
Apparently unaware of Hunt's invention Elias Howe, a native of Spencer, Mass., directed his attention to machine-sewing about 1843. In 1844 he completed a rough model, and in 1846 patented his sewing machine (fig. 1). Howe was thus the first to patent a lock-stitch machine, but his invention had the two essential features—the curved eye-pointed needle and the under-thread shuttle—invented by Hunt twelve years previously. Howe's inven tion was sold in England to William F. Thomas of Cheapside, London, a corset manufacturer, for £250. Thomas secured in Dec. 1846 the English patent in his own name, and engaged Howe on weekly wages to adapt the machine for his manufacturing pur poses. The career of the inventor in London was unsuccessful ; and, having pawned his American patent rights in England, he returned in 1849 in poverty to America. There in the meantime the sewing machine was beginning to excite public curiosity, and various persons were making machines which Howe found to trench on his patent rights. The most prominent of the manufac turers, if not of inventors, ultimately appeared in Isaac Merritt Singer (1811-75), who in 1851 secured a patent for his machine. Elias Howe now became alert to vindicate his rights, and, after regaining possession of his pawned patent, he instituted suits against the infringers. An enormous amount of litigation ensued, but ultimately all makers became tributary to Elias Howe.