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Retro news: The sewing machine was patented in the USA 182 years ago

21.2.2024

Translation: machine translated

The model was developed from a series of previous auxiliary machines for manual labour. However, its inventor, Greenough, was unable to achieve commercial success with it.

Washington D.C.: John James Greenough receives the first US patent for a sewing machine on 21 February 1842. What the American registered was only intended for processing leather. Sewing furs and leather hides was far more complicated and required more precision. At the time, leather was an important material, as it was used to make largely waterproof items of clothing, as well as everyday items such as saddles, bridles and pouches.

This requirement gave rise to Greenough's model. If you would like to take a look, you can find a picture here. The piercing work was done with an awl: a pointed tool for piercing holes. The fabric was held in place between clamps. A movable frame allowed forward or backward stitches to be made as required. The leather was automatically fed to the needle at a certain speed. A weight pulled the thread out. There was also a stop function that switched off the machine if a thread broke or became too short.

This is what an awl looks like.
Source: Ekaterina43/Shutterstock

Despite patent, no industrial production

Before John James Greenough, several resourceful craftsmen had already worked on the development of a machine for sewing. The very first one to go down in history was the wooden version developed by shoemaker Thomas Saint in 1790 during the Industrial Revolution. It was used exclusively for the manufacture of shoes. However, Elias Howe and Isaac Merritt Singer are often cited as the actual fathers of the sewing machine, who brought machines into commercial production shortly after Greenough's invention and covered each other with patent lawsuits. In the end, they both became rich from their inventions.

Although Greenough was the first to receive the US patent for his sewing machine, it never made it to industrial production. However, Greenough was able to get over the lack of commercial success: he held numerous other more profitable patents, including for lampshades, hinges and looms. After his own employment at the patent office, he also worked as a patent lawyer and editor of a scientific gazette and only died in 1908 at the ripe old age of 96.

Similar mechanism to today

A common feature of all these machines was their enormous size and the fact that they were mechanically driven by the foot. At first glance, they bore little resemblance to the handy home sewing machines we know today. However, the basic mechanism, in which a needle and a hook arm link several threads together, has remained the same - as is the case with the models available in our shop: This example from the brand Emerio with twelve sewing programmes is particularly popular, for example.