The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century Part 14

Nearly 1,700 patents have been granted for such machines, and more than 100 useful and meritorious machines have been devised and put upon the market. Among these may be mentioned the Hall, Underwood, Manhattan, Williams, Jewett, and many others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 143.--ELLIOTT & HATCH BOOK TYPEWRITER.]

Besides the regular typewriters, various modifications have been made to suit special kinds of work. The "Comptometer" used in banks is a species of typewriter, as is also the Dudley adding and subtracting machine, known as the "Numerograph," and covered by patents Nos. 554,993, 555,038, 555,039, 579,047 and 579,048. Typewriters for short hand characters, and for foreign languages, and for printing on record and blank books, are also among the modern developments of this art. In the latter the whole carriage and system of type levers move over the book.

The Elliott & Hatch book typewriter, Fig. 143, is a well-known example.

In attachments, holders for the copy have received considerable attention, and simple and practical billing and tabulating attachments have been devised which expedite and facilitate the statements of accounts and other work requiring numeration in columns. The Gorin Tabulator is one of those in practical use.

In point of speed the typewriter depends entirely upon the aptness of the operator. For ordinary copying work, where much time is occupied in deciphering the illegible scrawl, probably forty words a minute is the average work. When taken from dictation, seventy-five words a minute may be written, and in special cases, when copying from memory, a speed of 150 words a minute has been maintained for a limited time. It was estimated that there were in use in the United States in 1896 150,000 typewriters, and that up to that time 450,000 had been made altogether.

In the last four years this number has been greatly increased, and a fair estimate of the present output in the United States is between 75,000 and 100,000 yearly. In 1898 there were exported from the United States typewriting machines to the value of $1,902,153.

The typewriter has not only revolutionized modern business methods, by furnishing a quick and legible copy that may be rapidly taken from dictation, and also at the same time a duplicate carbon copy for the use of the writer, but it has established a distinct avocation especially adapted to the deftness and skill of women, who as bread winners at the end of the Nineteenth Century are working out a destiny and place in the business activities of life unthought of a hundred years ago. The typewriter saves time, labor, postage and paper; it reduces the liability to mistakes, brings system into official correspondence, and delights the heart of the printer. It furnishes profitable amus.e.m.e.nt to the young, and satisfactory aid to the nervous and paralytic. All over the world it has already traveled--from the counting house of the merchant to the Imperial Courts of Europe, from the home of the new woman in the Western Hemisphere to the harem of the East--everywhere its familiar click is to be heard, faithfully translating thought into all languages, and for all peoples.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SEWING MACHINE.

EMBROIDERING MACHINE, THE FORERUNNER OF THE SEWING MACHINE--SEWING MACHINE OF THOMAS SAINT--THE THIMONNIER WOODEN MACHINE--GREENOUGH'S DOUBLE POINTED NEEDLE--BEAN'S STATIONARY NEEDLE--THE HOWE SEWING MACHINE--BACHELDER'S CONTINUOUS FEED--IMPROVEMENTS OF SINGER-- WILSON'S ROTARY HOOK AND FOUR-MOTION FEED--THE MCKAY SHOE SEWING MACHINE--b.u.t.tONHOLE MACHINES--CARPET SEWING MACHINE--STATISTICS.

"With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread-- St.i.tch! St.i.tch! St.i.tch!

In poverty, hunger and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, She sang the 'Song of the Shirt.'"

In 1844 Thomas Hood wrote and published his famous "Song of the Shirt,"

in which the drudgery of the needle is portrayed with pathetic fidelity.

It is not to be supposed that any relation of cause and effect exists between the events, but it is nevertheless a singular fact that about this time Howe commenced work on his great invention, which was patented in 1846, and was the prototype of the modern sewing machine. If the sewing machine had appeared a few years earlier, the "Song of the Shirt"

would doubtless never have been written.

From the time of Mother Eve, who crudely st.i.tched together her fig leaves, sewing seems to have been set apart as an occupation peculiarly belonging to women, and it may be that this was the reason why in the history of mechanical progress the sewing machine was so late appearing, for women are not, as a rule, inventors, and none of the sewing machines were invented by women.

In all the preceding centuries of civilization hand sewing was exclusively employed, and it was reserved for the Nineteenth Century to relieve women from the drudgery which for so many centuries had enslaved them.

Embroidery machines had been patented in England by Weisenthal in 1755, and Alsop in 1770, and on July 17, 1790, an English patent, No. 1,764, was granted to Thomas Saint for a crude form of sewing machine, having a horizontal arm and vertical needle. In 1826 a patent was granted in the United States to one Lye for a sewing machine, but no records of the same remain, as all were burned in the fire of 1836. In 1830 B.

Thimonnier patented a sewing machine in France, 80 of which, made of wood, were in use in 1841 for sewing army clothing, but they were destroyed by a mob, as many other labor-saving inventions had been before. Between 1832 and 1835 Walter Hunt, of New York, made a lock-st.i.tch sewing machine, but abandoned it. On Feb. 21, 1842, U. S.

Pat. No. 2,466 was granted to J. J. Greenough for a sewing machine having a double pointed needle with an eye in the middle, which needle was drawn through the work by pairs of traveling pincers. It was designed for sewing leather, and an awl pierced the hole in advance of the needle. On March 4, 1843, U. S. Pat. No. 2,982 was granted to B. W.

Bean for a sewing machine in which the needle was stationary, and the cloth was gathered in crimps or folds and forced over the stationary needle. In 1844, British Pat. No. 10,424 was granted to Fisher and Gibbons for working ornamental designs by machinery, in which two threads were looped together, one pa.s.sing through the fabric, and the other looping with it on the surface without pa.s.sing through.

The great epoch of the sewing machine, however, begins with Elias Howe and the sewing machine patented by him Sept. 10, 1846, No. 4,750. Almost everyone is familiar with the modern Howe sewing machine, and it will be therefore more interesting to present the form in which it originally appeared. This is shown in Fig. 144. A curved eye-pointed needle was carried at the end of a pendent vibrating lever, which had a motion simulating that of a pick-ax in the hands of a workman. The needle took its thread from a spool situated above the lever, and the tension on the thread was produced by a spring brake whose semicircular end bore upon the spool, the pressure being regulated by a vertical thumb screw. The work was held in a vertical plane by means of a horizontal row of pins projecting from the edge of a thin metal "baster plate," to which an intermittent motion was given by the teeth of a pinion. Above, and to one side of the "baster plate" was the shuttle race, through which the shuttle carrying the second thread was driven by two strikers, which were operated by two arms and cams located on the horizontal main shaft.

As will be seen, this machine bears but little resemblance to any of the modern machines, but it embodied the three essential features which characterize most all practical machines, viz.: a grooved needle with the eye at the point, a shuttle operating on the opposite side of the cloth from the needle to form a lock st.i.tch, and an automatic feed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 144.--HOWE'S SEWING MACHINE, 1846.]

Howe first commenced his work on the sewing machine in 1844, and although he had made a rough model of that date, he was too poor to follow it up with more practical results until a former schoolmate, George Fisher, provided $500 to build a machine and support his family while it was being constructed, in consideration of which Mr. Fisher was to receive a half interest in the invention. In April, 1845, the machine was completed, and in July he sewed two suits of clothes on it, one for Mr. Fisher and the other for himself. Notwithstanding the success of his machine, which on public exhibition beat five of the swiftest hand sewers, he met only discouragement and disappointment. He, however, built a second machine, which was the basis of his patent, and is the one shown in the ill.u.s.tration. After obtaining his United States patent Howe went to England with the hope of introducing his machine there, but, failing, he returned to America, some years later, only to find that his invention had been taken up by infringers, and that sewing machines embodying his invention were being built and sold. These infringers sought to break his patent by endeavoring to prove, but without success, that Howe's invention was antic.i.p.ated by the abandoned experiments of Walter Hunt in 1834. Howe won his suit, and the infringers were obliged to pay him royalties, which, for a time, amounted to $25 on each machine. Howe then bought the outstanding interest in his patent, established a factory in New York, and from the profits of his manufacture, and the royalties, he soon reaped a princely fortune of several million dollars. In six years his royalties had grown from $300 to $200,000 a year, and in 1863 his royalties were estimated at $4,000 a day.

A patent that occupied an important place in sewing machine feeds was that granted to Bachelder May 8, 1849, No. 6,439, in which a spiked and endless belt pa.s.sed horizontally around two pulleys. This patent contained the first continuous feed, and it was re-issued and extended, and ran with dominating claims on the continuous feed, until 1877.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 145.--WILSON SEWING MACHINE, 1852.]

In connection with the development of the sewing machine the name of A.

B. Wilson stands next in rank to that of Howe. Wilson invented the rotary hook carrying a bobbin, which took the place of the reciprocating shuttle. This was patented by him June 15, 1852, No. 9,041, and is shown in Fig. 145. He also invented the far more important improvement of the four-motion feed, which is a characteristic feature of nearly all practical family sewing machines. This four-motion feed was pooled in the early sewing machine combination with the Bachelder and other patents, and earned for its promotors a far greater pecuniary return than the original Howe sewing machine itself. Estimates place this profit high in the millions. The four-motion feed was patented December 19, 1854, No. 12,116, and it is a comparatively simple affair. Divested of its operating mechanism, it consists simply of a little metal bar serrated with forwardly projecting saw teeth on its upper surface, to which bar, by means of an operating cam, a motion in four directions in the path of a rectangle is given. The serrated bar first rises through a slot in the table, then moves horizontally to advance the cloth, then drops below the table, and finally moves back again horizontally below the table to its starting point.

Upon these two important features--the rotating hook patented by Wilson in 1852, and the four-motion feed, patented in 1854--a large and important business was built. In this business Mr. Nathaniel Wheeler was a.s.sociated with Mr. Wilson, and the well-known Wheeler & Wilson machines are the result of their enterprise and ingenuity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 146.--ORIGINAL SINGER SEWING MACHINE.]

Contemporaneous with the Wheeler & Wilson machine were other excellent machines, among which may be mentioned the Singer machine, patented Aug.

12, 1851, No. 8,294, by Isaac M. Singer, the original model of which is shown in Fig. 146. The Singer machine met the demands of the tailoring and leather industries for a heavier and more powerful machine. A characteristic feature was the vertical standard with horizontal arm above the work table, which was afterwards adopted in many other machines. Singer was the first to apply the treadle to the sewing machine for actuating it by foot power in the place of the hand-driven crank wheel. In 1851 W. O. Grover and W. E. Baker patented a machine which made the double chain st.i.tch, characteristic of the Grover & Baker machine. James E. A. Gibbs invented and covered in several patents from 1856 to 1860 the single-thread rotating hook, which was embodied in the Wilc.o.x & Gibbs machine. In addition to these, the "Weed" machine, made under Fairfield's patents; the "Domestic" machine, made under Mack's patents; and the "Florence" machine, made under Langdon's patents, were other representative machines, which, in a few years after Howe's patent, helped to revolutionize the art of tailoring, introduced the great era of ready-made clothing and ready-made shoes, emanc.i.p.ated women from the drudgery of the needle, and increased the efficiency of one pair of hands fully ten fold.

In 1856 the owners of the original sewing machine patents formed the famous "sewing machine combination," for the establishment of a common license fee, and for the protection of their mutual interests. The combination included Elias Howe, the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company, the Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Company, and I. M. Singer & Co. The following summary of machines made by the leading companies from 1853 to 1876 ill.u.s.trates the early growth of this industry:

Manufacturer. 1853. 1859. 1867. 1871. 1873. 1876.

Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Co. 799 21,306 38,055 128,526 119,190 108,997

The Singer Manufacturing Company 810 10,953 43,053 181,260 232,444 262,316

Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Co. 657 10,280 32,999 50,838 36,179 ....

Howe Sewing Machine Company .... .... 11,053 134,010 90,000 109,294

Wilc.o.x & Gibbs Sewing Machine Co. .... .... 14,152 30,127 15,881 12,758

Domestic Sewing Machine Company .... .... .... 10,397 40,114 23,587

From the foregoing table it will be seen that as far back as a quarter of a century ago the output of machines was over a half a million a year. By 1877 all of the fundamental patents on the sewing machine had expired, but the continued activity of inventors in this field is attested by the fact that to-day there are many thousands of patents relating to the sewing machine and its parts. Besides those relating to the organization of the machine itself there is an endless variety of attachments, such as hemmers, tuckers, fellers, quilters, binders, gatherers and rufflers, embroiderers, corders and b.u.t.ton hole attachments. Every part of the machine has also received separate attention and separate patents, all tending to the perfection of the machine, until to-day, with all fundamental principles public property, and endless improvements in details, it is difficult to discriminate as to comparative excellence.

There is to-day a great variety of sewing machines on the market, standard machines for ordinary work, and special machines for numerous special applications. It is said that one concern alone manufactures over four hundred different varieties of sewing machines.

One of the most important and revolutionary of the applications of the sewing machine is for making shoes. Prior to 1861 shoemaking was confined to the slow, laborious hand methods of the shoemaker. Cheap shoes could only be made by roughly fastening the soles to the uppers by wooden pegs, whose row of projecting points within has made many a man and boy do unnecessary penance. Hand sewed shoes cost from $8 to $12 a pair, and were too expensive a luxury for any but the rich. With the McKay shoe sewing machine in 1861, however, comfortable shoes were made, with the soles strongly and substantially sewed to the uppers, at a less price even than the coa.r.s.e and clumsy pegged variety. The McKay machine was the result of more than three years patient study and work. It was covered by United States patents No. 35,105, April 29, 1862; No. 35,165, May 6, 1862; No. 36,163, Aug. 12, 1862; and No. 45,422, Dec. 13, 1864, and its development cost $130,000 before practical results were obtained. A modern form of it is shown in Fig. 147. In preparing a shoe for the machine, an inner sole is placed on the last, the upper is then lasted and its edges secured to the inner sole. An outer sole, channeled to receive the st.i.tches, is then tacked on so that the edges of the upper are caught and retained between the two soles. The shoe is then placed on the end of a rotary support called a horn, which holds it up to the needle. A spool containing thread coated with shoemakers' wax is carried by the horn, and the thread, with its wax kept soft by a lamp, runs up the inside of the horn to the whirl. The latter is a small ring placed at the upper end of the horn, and through which there is an opening for the pa.s.sage of the needle. The needle has a barb, or hook, and as it descends through the sole the whirl lays the thread in this hook, and as the needle rises it draws the thread through the soles and forms a chain st.i.tch in the external channel of the outer sole. As the sewing proceeds, the horn is rotated so as to bring every part of the margin of the sole under the needle. With this machine a single operator has been able to sew nine hundred pairs of shoes in a day of ten hours, and five hundred to six hundred pairs is only an average workman's output. It is said that up to 1877 there were 350,000,000 pairs of shoes made on this machine in the United States, and probably an equal or greater number in Europe. Shoes made on this machine were strongly made and comfortable, but they could not be resoled by a shoemaker, except by pegging or nailing, and the soles were furthermore somewhat stiff and lacking in flexibility. To meet these difficulties, a new machine known as the "Goodyear Welt Machine," was patented in 1871 and 1875, and brought out a little later. This sewed a welt to an upper, which welt in a subsequent operation was sewed by an external row of st.i.tches to the sole. This gave much greater flexibility, and the further advantage of enabling a shoemaker to half sole the shoe by the old method of hand sewing. This advanced the art of shoemaking in the finer varieties of shoes, and to-day nearly all men's fine shoes are made in this way. The introduction of the sewing machine into the shoe industry made a new era in foot wear, and it is said that no nation on earth is so well and cheaply shod as the people of the United States.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 147.--MCKAY SHOE SEWING MACHINE.]

A b.u.t.tonhole does not strike the average person as a thing of any importance whatever. The needlewoman, however, who has to patiently st.i.tch around and form the b.u.t.tonholes, knows differently, and when this needlewoman, working in the great shirt factories and shoe factories, is confronted with the many millions of b.u.t.tonholes in collars, cuffs, shirts and shoes, the great amount of this painstaking and nerve destroying labor becomes appalling. For cheapening the cost of b.u.t.tonholes, and reducing the hand labor, various b.u.t.tonhole machines and attachments to sewing machines have been devised. Patents Nos.

36,616 and 36,617, to Humphrey, Oct. 7, 1862, covered one of the earliest forms, but the Reece b.u.t.tonhole machine, which is specially devised for the work, is one of the most modern and successful. It was patented April 26, 1881, Sept. 21, 1886, and Aug. 20, 1895. These machines mark an important departure, which consists in working the b.u.t.tonhole by moving the st.i.tch forming mechanism about the b.u.t.tonhole, instead of moving the fabric. An ill.u.s.tration of the machine is given in Fig. 148. Upon this machine 10,010 b.u.t.ton holes have been made in nine hours and fifty minutes. The machine first cuts the b.u.t.tonhole, then transfers it to the st.i.tching devices, which st.i.tch and bar the b.u.t.tonhole, finishing it entirely in an automatic manner. The saving involved to the manufacturer by this machine over the hand method is several hundred per cent., but the relief to the needlewoman is of far greater consequence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 148.--REECE b.u.t.tONHOLE MACHINE.]

Many striking applications of the sewing machine to various kinds of work have been made. A recent one is the automatic power carpet sewing machine, made and sold by the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was patented by E. B. Allen in 1894. This machine in general appearance resembles a miniature elevated railroad. It consists of an elevated track about thirty-six feet long, sustained every three or four feet upon standards, and having clamping jaws, which hold together the upper edges of the two lengths of carpet to be sewed together. A compact little st.i.tching apparatus, not larger than a tea-pot, is actuated by an endless belt from an electric motor at one end. The little machine runs along and st.i.tches together the upper edges of the suspended carpet lengths, and as it crawls along at its work, it strikingly reminds one of the movements of a squirrel along the top of a rail fence. This machine will sew five yards of seam every minute, fastening together evenly and strongly ten yards of carpet, and entirely dispensing with all hand labor in this roughest and most trying of all fabrics.

Probably no organized piece of machinery has ever been so systematically exploited, so thoroughly advertised, so persistently canva.s.sed, and so extensively sold as the sewing machine. With their main central offices, their branch offices, sub-agencies and traveling canva.s.sers in wagons, every city, village, hamlet, and farmhouse has been actively besieged, and with the enticing system of payment by instalments there is scarcely a home too humble to be without its sewing machine. The retail price of sewing machines bears no proper relation to their cost, but this price to the consumer results from the liberal commissions to agents, and the expensive methods of canva.s.sing. In the early days of the sewing machine its sales were chiefly for family use, but this is now no longer the case. While almost every family owns a sewing machine, it is only brought into requisition for finer and special varieties of work, since nearly all the clothing of men, women and children can now be purchased ready made, at a price much less than the cost of the material and the labor of making it up. A man to-day buys a ready-made shirt for fifty cents, which fifty years ago would have cost him $2. This has largely transferred the sphere of action of the sewing machine from the family to the factory. Great factories now make ready-made clothing for men, women and children, shirts, collars and cuffs, shoes, hats, caps, awnings, tents, sails, bags, flags, banners, corsets, gloves, pocketbooks, harness, saddlery, rubber goods, etc., and all these industries are founded upon the sewing machine, which may be seen in long rows beside the factory walls, busily supplying the demand of the world. With this transition in the sewing machine foot treadles are no longer relied on, but the machines are run by power from countershafts.

This, in turn, has opened up possibilities of much higher speed and greater efficiency in the machine. Inventors have found, however, that high speed is handicapped with certain limitations. Beyond a certain speed the needle gets hot from friction, which burns off the thread and draws the temper. Cams and springs, moreover, are not positive enough in action, as the resilience of the spring does not act quickly enough, and so more positive gearings, such as eccentrics and cranks, must be employed. Despite these difficulties, however, the modern factory machine has raised the speed of the old-time sewing machine from a few hundred st.i.tches a minute to three and four thousand st.i.tches a minute.

The United States is the home of the sewing machine, and New York City is the center of the industry, probably 90 per cent. of the sewing machine trade being managed and handled there. German manufacturers are making great efforts to compete in this field, but American machines are generally regarded as the best in the world.

Among those prominently interested in the machine in its early days were Orlando B. Potter and the law firm of Jordan & Clarke. The latter were attorneys representing some of the prominent inventors in litigation, and in this way Mr. Edward Clarke became interested in the business, and it was he who in 1856 inst.i.tuted the system of selling on the instalment plan. For some years before his death Mr. Clarke was the president of the Singer Company.

Recent statistics in relation to the sewing machine industry are difficult to obtain, partly by reason of the great extent and ramifications of the business, and partly by reason of the unwillingness of the larger companies to give out data for publication. At the Patent Centennial in Washington, in 1891, Ex-Commissioner of Patents b.u.t.terworth made the statement that "Caesar conquered Gaul with a force numerically less than was employed in inventing and perfecting the parts of the sewing machine." The great Singer Company, with headquarters at New York, operates not only a factory at Elizabethport, N. J., employing 5,000 men, but also other factories in Europe and Canada, the one at Kilbowie, Scotland, employing 6,000 men. Of the total of 13,500,000 machines made by this company from 1853 to the end of 1896, nearly 6,000,000 have been made in factories located abroad, but directly controlled and managed by the New York office. It is stated that the present output of the American factory of the Singer Company amounts to over 11,000 weekly, or more than half a million annually. Although so many sewing machines are made abroad, the exports from the United States for 1899 amounted to $3,264,344.