Chapter III: The First Singer Machine

The humble origin of the first practically successful sewing machine was told by Mr. Singer himself a few years before his death. We reproduce the interesting narrative in his own language:

“My attention was first directed to sewing machines late in August,
1850. I then saw in Boston some Blodgett sewing machines, which Mr.
Orson C. Phelps was employed to keep in running order. I had then
patented a carving machine, and Phelps, I think, suggested that if I
could make the sewing machine practical I should make money.

“Considering the matter over night, I became satisfied I could make
them practically applicable to all kinds of work, and the next day
showed Phelps and George B. Zeiber a rough sketch of the machine I
proposed to build. It contained a table to support the cloth
horizontally, instead of a feed-bar from which it was suspended
vertically in the Blodgett machine, a vertical presser-foot to hold
the cloth, and an arm to hold the presser-foot and needle bar over the
table.

“I explained to them how the work was to be fed over the table and
under the presser-foot, by a wheel having short pins on its periphery,
projecting through a slot in the table, so that the work would be
automatically caught, fed, and freed from the pins, in place of
attaching and detaching the work to and from the baster-plate by hand,
as was necessary in the Blodgett machine.

“Phelps and Zieber were satisfied that it would work. I had no money.
Zieber offered forty dollars to build a model machine. Phelps offered
his best endeavors to carry out my plan and make the model in his
shop. If successful we were to share equally. I worked at it day and
night, sleeping but three or four hours out of the twenty-four, and
eating generally but once a day, as I knew I must make it for the
forty dollars, or not get it at all.

“The machine was completed in eleven days. About nine o’clock in the
evening we got the parts together, and tried it. It did not sew. The
workmen, exhausted with almost unremitting work, pronounced it a
failure, and left me one by one.

DESERTED BUT DETERMINED.
]

“Zieber held the lamp, and I continued to try the machine; but anxiety
and incessant work had made me nervous, and I could not get tight
stitches. Sick at heart, about midnight we started for our hotel. On
the way we sat down on a pile of boards, and Zieber mentioned that the
loose loops of thread were on the upper side of the cloth. It flashed
upon me that we had forgotten to adjust the tension on the
needle-thread. We went back, adjusted the tension, tried the machine,
sewed five stitches perfectly, and the thread snapped. But that was
enough.”

Persistent efforts have been made by interested parties to create an impression upon the public mind that it was Mr. Howe who first evolved order out of the chaotic essentials of the sewing machine and brought it into practical use. Of this let the reader judge for himself, after comparing the features of each machine set forth below. Let him note the features that are still preserved in every successful sewing machine and those which have been abandoned as practically worthless, and he will find little difficulty in settling for himself the merits of the respective claims of Howe and Singer.

_HOWE’S MACHINE HAD_ │ _SINGER’S MACHINE HAD_
╭─────────1─────────╮
_A curved needle. (Now obsolete in │_A straight needle. (Now in general
machines of this class.)_ │ use.)_
╭─────────2─────────╮
_A needle arm swinging like a │_A needle bar moving vertically.
pendulum in an arc of a circle. │ (Now in general use.)_
(Now obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────3─────────╮
_A clamp, or “baster-plate,” from │_A horizontal table, upon which the
which the work was hung │ work was laid flat, by means of
vertically in front of the │ which it could be instantly and
machine. In order to make a turn │ readily turned in any direction.
in the seam, the machine had to │ (Now in general use.)_
be stopped, the goods taken off │
from the plate, and then │
readjusted to it. (Now │
obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────4─────────╮
_A feed motion imparted to the │_A feed motion imparted by means of
baster-plate by the teeth of an │ a roughened feed wheel extending
intermittently moving pinion, │ through a slot in the top of the
working into the holes of the │ table. (Replaced by the present
baster-plate, from which the work│ feed, similar in principle but
was suspended, which had to be │ improved in action.)_
readjusted every time a seam had │
been sewed the length of the │
plate. (Now obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────5─────────╮
_Two shuttle drivers, entirely │_Two shuttle carriers attached to
distinct from each other, which │ the same bar, sliding steadily
“threw” the shuttle from side to │ and regularly in a horizontal
side, producing violent │ groove. (Now in general use.)_
concussions, and liable to throw │
the shuttle drivers out of place.│
(Now obsolete.)_ │
╭─────────6─────────╮
│_A spring presser-foot by the side
│ of the needle, to hold the work
│ down. (Now in general use.)_
╭─────────7─────────╮
│_An adjustable arm for holding the
│ bobbin containing the
│ needle-thread. (Now obsolete.)_
╭─────────8─────────╮
_A single acting treadle. (Now │_A double acting treadle. (Now in
obsolete.)_ │ universal use._)
╭─────────9─────────╮
_An eye-pointed needle._ (INVENTED │_An eye-pointed needle._ (INVENTED
BY WALTER HUNT.) │ BY WALTER HUNT.)

The tests of time and actual service have been applied to the original features of both machines, and these, at least, know no favoritism. It matters not in these tests how broad or loud is the claim of any man; history may be blinded for a time, but the “survival of the fittest” is the inexorable law in useful inventions.

None of the devices used by the man who claims to have “invented the sewing machine” can be found in any successful shuttle machine to-day. Thirty years of actual service have swept away every vestige of Howe’s original machine except the eye-pointed needle, invented twelve years before by Walter Hunt, and used by both Singer and Howe. Meanwhile every feature of Singer’s original machine has been adopted by every successful machine builder of the class to which these machines belonged, with the single and unimportant exception of the adjustable arm; and in nearly every case when a device of Howe’s has been found worthless, and been abandoned, it was Singer’s device which was substituted, as the foregoing table explicitly shows. In the clear light of such facts it is not difficult to understand to whom the world is really indebted for the inestimable boon of the sewing machine.