THE SEWING MACHINE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23315, 26 September 1945, Page 3

THE SEWING MACHINE

Invented 100 Years Ago On a certain day in 1845 a crowd stood outside a shop in Boston, in the United States of America. They were watching six people, a man and five women sewing for dear life in a sewing match. The five women were sewing- in the only way the crowd had ever seen before, namely, by hand, while the man, Elias Howe, was sewing in a new way with a machine he had just invented. And the man was doing more stitches each minute with his machine than the five women put together. There is a story that in 1839 when Elias Howe was very poor, a man called at the shop where he was working to show a model of a knitting-machine, and Elias overheard their conversation. “A knitting-machine!” said the shop owner. “I wish you would invent a sewing-machine. You would make a fortune if you did.” Elias Howe pricked up his ears. “Here is my chance!” he said to himself, and went home and got to work. Six years later he had found a way. and he was sitting outside the shop sewing more than five times as quickly with his machine as American housewives could sew by hand. But poor Howe did not immediately make the fortune which he had expected. He could not sell the machine he made, and next year he sold the English patent rights to an English corset manufacturer. In 1849 we find him returning to America “in deep poverty”—only to find everyone excited about sewing-machines and various people making machines which encroached on Howe’s patent rights. These manufacturers were pushing- their products in a way Howe had been unable to do. and in 1851 a man called Isaac Singer seemed to be well on the way to making the fortune which Howe had expected. So Howe went to Court and after an enormous amount of money had been spent on lawyers’ fees he eventually won his case, and it was decided that he had to receive a royaltv on every sewingmachine manufactured. Howe died in 1867. the year in which his patent expired, a wealthy man at last, for it was estimated that by that time the royalties naid to him had amounted to over 162.000.000.