INVENTOR'S ILL-LUCK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20622, 22 July 1930, Page 5

INVENTOR'S ILL-LUCK.

SEWING MACHINE ROMANCE.

RIOTERS WRECK FACTORY.

CENTENARY THIS YEAR. The first of the sowing machines—mado exactly 100 years ago —is now being exhibited in Paris. Its history is interesting. The story of its invenior is< pathetic, if not tragic. The inventor's name was Barthelcmy

Thimonnier. His father, a dyer by trade,, apprenticed him to a tailor, in the neigh - bourhood of Lyons. He observed tho women there at their crochet work; it occurred to him that perhaps a machine© could bo made to do what they wcroi doing, and to do it six times as fast. Thimonnier neglected his tailoring—llo had been set up in a small tailor'a shop at Saint Etienne—in order to follow up his idea, in spite of the sneers of his family, who told him that ho waß mad to "try to sew breeches otherwise than in the way in which they had been sewn since tho invention of needles, thread and thimbles "

By 1829 the inventor had succeeded in making a practicable machine. A friend at the Saint Etienne School of Mines made the necessary drawings and provided money to enable him to secure a patent. He took out his patent', went to Paris, and there formed a company. His establishment was in th® Rue de Sevres. He was prepared to make military uniforms, and had 80 sewing machines ready to bp used for that purpose Fortune seemed to be smiling on him. And then—catastrophe

Tiiimonnier had launched his enterpriaa at an inconvenient time. There had just been a revolution, and there was a grent deal of unemployment. The workmen feared that this rationalisation would add to the number of the unemployed. Thee rioted. Two hundred of them stormed tha workshop, smashed up all the 80 sewing machines in it, and so terrified Thimonnier by their threats that he ran away.

The fact that 7b of the rioters were arrested and sent to prison did not help the inventor; and the result of the riot was to postpone the use of sewing machines for a quarter of a century, and to give tho first material benefit of the invention to England and America. With one sewing machine —tho original model—on his back, and without a penny in his pocket, Thimonnier went back to his trade, His home and his wifo. He paid his expenses as he went by exhibiting his model in the inns, and then sending round the hat. in the intervals of tailoring, he made a few more machines and sold them at £2 each

to such of his neighbours as he could persuade to buy them. Fifteen years or so later Thimonnier took one of his machines to .London, where it attracted some attention, and induced, the Morning Post to predict that it would supersede hand-sewing. He did not livo to see the prediction fulfilled, and died, insolvent, in 1857, leaving his family destitute. In 1872 an appeal was made to the French Government on behalf of the widow; and the Minister of the Interior,

after careful investigation of the case, bestowed upon her the munificent, gratuity of £l2.