Linda Drew  age 9. of Bridgeport. Conn

Who invented the sewing machine?

A sewing machine is a wonderful gadget to own: Mother can make you a fine new dress in half a day. If the machine is up‑to‑date. she can use it to make the buttonholes. She can even use it to add a touch of fancy embroidery stitching. She may use it to mend socks and run up a pair of curtains in a jiffy. Maybe she will help you to make an apron with that wonderful sewing machine.

All this fast fun was impossible 150 years ago. For a workable home sewing machine had not then been invented. All sewing was done by hand ‑ send you know how long that takes. The idea of a sewing machine started almost 200 years ago. Many people tried to make one. And later. there were others who added a new idea here and there to improve the machine.

Way back in 1790. Thomas Saint. of. London. took a patent on a sewing machine. His machine was for stitching leather. But the idea did not catch on at that time. In 1830. Barthelemy Thimonier got into real trouble with the sewing machine he invented He nearly lost his life on account of it.

This was in Paris! where many seamstresses earned their living by sewing. They feared that the new machine would put them out of business. Barthelemy's tailor shop was mobbed and his machines smashed to bits.

A few years later. the man who is given credit four inventing the safety pin got busy on a sewing machine. He was Walter Hunt. of New York. Walter’s machine was invented for seaming cloth. But it couldn’t make curved seams and it had to be reset every few inches. This grandpa of sewing machines. was not patented. Hunt thought that if it became popular it would put many tailors and seamstresses out of work.

In 1846. Elias Howe of Massachusetts made a much better machine. He did not win the patent rights for another 8 years. Isaac Singer won certain rights for improving Howe's machine.

Still other inventors added their ideas before the sewing machine as we know it today. Allen Wilson showed how to feed cloth into the machine

John Bachelder helped it to make longer seams. The chain stitch idea was developed by James Gibbs and James Willcox. And countless other inventors have added their ideas to bring us the modern sewing machine.

What's more. other improvements are still being added. As you see. a lot of inventors worked to bring us the wonderful sewing machine. Such a machine was needed and. as always. there were plenty of wide awake inventors to give us what we need. And is anybody out of work on account of this invention? Of course not. More people are busy sewing than ever before. More people are earning their living with the help of the sewing machine that ever worked at hand seaming and tailoring.