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 machines of this class.) | A straight needle. (Now in general use.) |
| ╭─────────2─────────╮ | |
| A needle arm swinging like a pendulum in an arc of a circle. (Now obsolete.) | A needle bar moving vertically. (Now in general use.) |
| ╭─────────3─────────╮ | |
| A clamp, or “baster-plate,” from which the work was hung vertically in front of the machine. In order to make a turn in the seam, the machine had to be stopped, the goods taken off from the plate, and then readjusted to it. (Now obsolete.) | A horizontal table, upon which the work was laid flat, by means of which it could be instantly and readily turned in any direction. (Now in general use.) |
| ╭─────────4─────────╮ | |
| A feed motion imparted to the baster-plate by the teeth of an intermittently moving pinion, working into the holes of the baster-plate, from which the work was suspended, which had to be readjusted every time a seam had been sewed the length of the plate. (Now obsolete.) | A feed motion imparted by means of a roughened feed wheel extending through a slot in the top of the table. (Replaced by the present feed, similar in principle but improved in action.) |
| ╭─────────5─────────╮ | |
| Two shuttle drivers, entirely distinct from each other, which “threw” the shuttle from side to side, producing violent concussions, and liable to throw the shuttle drivers out of place. (Now obsolete.) | Two shuttle carriers attached to the same bar, sliding steadily and regularly in a horizontal groove. (Now in general use.) |
| ╭─────────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 obsolete.) | A double acting treadle. (Now in universal use.) |
| ╭─────────9─────────╮ | |
| An eye-pointed needle. (Invented by Walter Hunt.) | An eye-pointed needle. (Invented 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.