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A Very Special Stitch In Time

By Dan Harshman

Sitting behind glass as part of an exhibit featuring clothing items and accessories on the third floor of our Museum is a small cast iron sewing machine. It’s certainly nothing special, but its history begins with failed inventions and legal battles. This particular sewing machine dates back to around 1850 and was made by Elias Howe. It has a feature that made it stand out and was instrumental to creating the sewing machine as we know it today; the lockstitch.

A lockstitch is created using 2 threads; a top thread supplied by a needle and a bottom thread provided by a bobbin. I’ll explain a little more about how it works later. Before that happens, let’s talk about what led up to Howe’s patented invention of 1845.

People started sewing by hand over 20,000 years ago with needles made from animal horns or bone, using thread made from animal sinew. As we moved into the Industrial Revolution in Europe during the 18th century a need to create a machine to take over for hand sewing in factories got inventors thinking about new machines to do the work. 

The first recorded British patent associated with a sewing machine was issued in 1755 to Charles Weisenthal. It was for a needle that was designed for use in a machine. In a “what came first, the chicken or the egg” way, it is interesting to note that there is no description in his patent of any machine to use the needle in.

It wasn’t until 1790 that Thomas Saint, an English cabinet maker, designed the first sewing machine of its kind. The patent described a machine powered by a hand crank and designed to be used on leather and canvas. For some reason nobody actually knows if he ever built his invention. His patent drawings were found by an English engineer, William Newton Wilson in 1874. The drawings were so detailed that Wilson was able to build the machine and proved that it actually did work.

All the early attempts at making a working sewing machine used a needle that moved from side to side and was operated by a hand crank. It wasn’t until 1830 that a French tailor named Barthelemy Thimonnier invented an actual functioning sewing machine. It used a hooked needle and one thread to sew a chain stitch.

Thimonnier patented his invention and opened the world’s first machine based clothing manufacturing business. His first contract was to make uniforms for the French Army. While you would think that the world would be pleased with such a great invention, there were those that felt threatened instead. The other French tailors, fearing his invention would put them all out of work, burnt down his factory with him inside.

The fear of causing others to lose their jobs wasn’t just limited to Europe. American Walter Hunt designed the first functioning sewing machine on our side of the Atlantic in 1834.

Before he got around to patenting his design he started worrying about its impact on the jobs of others and he decided not to proceed.

The challenge in designing a functioning sewing machine was to get all of the various elements and different moving parts involved to work together. By 1844, English inventor John Fisher designed a sewing machine that accomplished the task of making everything work together. The patent of his invention was somehow lost and he never received the recognition he deserved for his design of a working sewing machine.

 One year later in America, Elias Howe invented a sewing machine that is similar to John Fisher’s. However, Howe did add a few tweaks and adjustments. His patent included “a process that uses thread from 2 different sources” creating what is called a lockstitch.

The lockstitch is made when a needle with an eye at the point for the one thread which goes through the fabric creating a loop on the reverse side. Then a shuttle (bobbin) on a track slips the second thread through the loop. This forms a lockstitch as the needle rises, the fabric moves forward and the process is repeated again. Unlike a chain stitch which uses 1 thread, the lockstitch won’t unravel even if a thread breaks. Because the threads loop around each other at every single stitch, pulling one thread only tightens the stitches against each other.

Howe struggled to market his design and decided to take it to England. When he returned to America years later he discovered others had copied his lockstitch mechanism. One of those was Isaac Merritt Singer.

Isaac Merritt Singer is one of most well known sewing machine manufacturers to this day. He developed the first version of the modern day sewing machine, with a foot pedal and the up-and-down needle. His early designs were inspired by those before him; which led to Howe filing a lawsuit for patent infringement.

Singer tried to refer back to Walter Hunt’s design, saying that Howe had infringed on that design. That didn’t amount to much since Hunt’s design was never patented. Howe won his case and Singer was forced to pay a lump sum of patent 

royalties to Howe, as well as giving him a share of the I.M. Singer & Co profits. If English inventor John Fisher’s patent had not been lost, he would have also had a case for patent infringement. Both Howe and Singer’s designs were almost identical to the one Fisher created back in 1844. 

 There will always be a question as to who should get the credit for inventing the sewing machine. But there is no question about the fact that the lockstitch is the standard stitch used for most sewing whether you are joining fabrics, creating garments or doing a simple repair.