Elias howe special edition швейная машинка инструкция

«Игра воображения» и человеческое любопытство, как мне кажется, две стороны одной медали. Чем человек любопытнее, тем лучше у него развито воображение)…

Когда я делала стол «Игра воображения», то мне было очень интересно понять, что же это за станина такая от швейной машинки, которая попалась мне в руки впервые и была не похожа на основную массу станин, которые дожили до нашего времени…

Я точно понимала, что вещь «с историей», но все мои попытки понять ее родословную успехом не увенчались).

Видя мой интерес, и будучи тоже человеком «любопытном» но, в отличие от меня, еще и ооочень умным и образованным))), на помощь пришел мой папа, который раскопал родословную от а до я)))).

Вот смотрите, что получается))).

Скорее всего, это «Howe Machine Company». — это «начало» всех швейных машин!

Но и ему не удалось наладить производство. В 1850-х годах американец Исаак Зингер усовершенствовал изобретение Элиаса Хоу и открыл собственную компанию по производству швейных машин.

Ручные машинки появились около двухсот пятидесяти лет назад и не представляли собой механизм внешне похожий на современный.

Швейная машина изобретённая Элиасом Хоу в 1845 г.

И лишь в 1845 году американскому механику Элиасу Хоу удалось сконструировать первую практически годную машину, дававшую двойную строчку и делавшую 300 стежков в минуту.

Элиас Хоу запатентовал краеобвязочную (швейно-отделочную) швейную машинку в 1846, однако только в 1865 он и братья Стоквелл создали компанию Howe Machine Company и установили фабрику в Бриджпорте (Коннектикут, США) . За первые шесть месяцев 1871 года их компания, произвела 34010 швейных машин, и уже в 1876 сообщалось, что фабрика могла произвести 1000 машин день.

В 1867 году компания Howe Machine Company имела офис на 64 Regent Street в Лондоне, а позже с 1875 года она переехала на 46/48 Queen Victoria Street в Лондоне.

Элиас Хоу умер в 1867, но его компания продолжила производить швейные машины, и в 1872 году основала фабрику на Avenue Street, Бриджтаун, Шотландия. В следующем году Howe Machine Company выкупила «Howe Sewing Machine Company», которую Амаса Б. Хоу (старший брат Элиаса Хоу) основал в 1854.

Howe Machine Company производила различные модели и для домашних, и для производственных целях, которые были основаны на оригинальном дизайне, разработанным компанией. К 1876 году была выпущена промышленная швейная машинка Letter ‘D’ с комбинированной рукояткой (?)для кожаной работы. Позже были выпущены новые модели для домашнего использования — модель Family и модель ‘G’ с высокой рукояткой, которая была произведена в 1882 году.

В начале 1880-х фабрика компании в Бриджтоне начала производить велосипеды и трехколесные велосипеды.

В Великобритании Howe Machine Company Ld закрылась в 1887 году, и в декабре того же года активы компании были выставлены на продажу. В Америке компания закрылась в 1886 году.

Машинки, произведенные в 1870-х годах в Шотландии, имели литую надпись «The Howe M Co Ld» на педали машинки. На основании машинки имелся медальон с портретом Элиаса Хоу Дж., являющийся торговой маркой предприятия, который по данным из источников компании был «внедрен на каждую подлинную швейную машинку Хоу». Слайды пластины были сделаны из латуни и имели различные даты производства, самое раннее время 10 сентября 1846 и последняя была произведена 30 января 1872.

Несмотря на то, что машинка не имела ни крышки, ни каких-либо креплений, отличительные знаки на ней всегда оставались в хорошем состоянии.

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Howe: Serial No.1403840.

Вот такая «Родословная»)!

P.S. Папе спасибо за всю представленную информацию, дочери за перевод с английского).

Всем спасибо за внимание!)

С уважением, Таша

Elias Howe’s Sewing Machine: Context and Background

The sewing machine was a product of a specific time and place in American history. It was motivated by the demands of the Second Industrial Revolution and the drastic increase of cotton cultivation in the south before the Civil War. Increased demand for finished cotton products meant there was a need for faster sewing processes. Elias Howe’s sewing machine, and the inevitable innovations in its design, such as the Singer machine, fulfilled this need.

The Second Industrial Revolution

The Second Industrial Revolution in the United States was an extension of a similar movement happening throughout the Western world, including Great Britain and Germany. Innovations and inventions increased the quantity and quality of products and significantly decreased the time required to make those products. The improved techniques and changing social norms of the Second Industrial Revolution resulted in the mechanization of many processes used in the creation of textiles and led to the formation of factory processes. By the mid-nineteenth century, textile factories had spread throughout New England.

The Expansion of Cotton Cultivation in the South

The textile industry was particularly important to the southern region of the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. The South, in the pre-Civil War period, was focused on cultivating and harvesting cotton, primarily using enslaved Black persons to do this.

Who Was Elias Howe?

Elias Howe was the inventor of both the lockstitch sewing machine and the zipper.

Elias Howe was born in the first years of the Second Industrial Revolution, in Massachusetts, on July 9, 1819. New England was transitioning from an agriculture-based economy to a manufacturing economy. Textile production became a major industry, with home- and factory-based operations alike spreading across the state. One of these was the immensely successful Boston Manufacturing Company, created in 1813. Before long, factories had pushed home-based competition out of business.

Elias Howe’s Early Life and Family

Elias Howe was born to a very poor family, just one of eight children. His parents were farmers and frequently needed him to work their farm, so he rarely attended school. Throughout his early adolescence, he worked on farms most of the time and contracted various diseases and ailments. These sicknesses, combined with a physical condition he had been born with, made farm work unsustainable for him, so he sought work at shops and manufacturing plants and began a life-long search for ways to accomplish work with the least possible physical effort.

Elias Howe’s Career

Howe was fascinated by the machines used in the factories, and when he was sixteen, he apprenticed himself to a machine manufacturer. His employer focused on machines that handled and processed cotton, and Howe spent much of his time learning how they created cotton threads and drew them through fabric. In 1837, after Howe’s employer went out of business, Howe went to work for a Cambridge inventor who created innovative machines like chronometers.

Elias Howe’s Invention of the Sewing Machine

Elias Howe’s inventions include the zipper and the lockstitch sewing machine. While working in Cambridge, he learned that there was a demand for a successful sewing machine. He realized that the person who invented a viable machine would be very wealthy. One of the biggest hurdles to overcome in machine sewing was the potential for the fabric to move around, which created uneven seams and other problems. To solve this issue, Howe developed the lockstitch mechanism.

After Howe realized a functioning model of his sewing machine design, he demonstrated its abilities by out-sewing local seamstresses, who sewed by hand, in public demonstrations. His machine could finish a project more than six times faster. He successfully applied for a patent in 1846.

Elias Howe: Innovative Design

While there were already several widely used sewing machines at the time of Elias Howe’s invention, multiple aspects of Howe’s design were innovative.

• An important part of Howe’s sewing machine was the lockstitch mechanism, which used a shuttle to hold thread beneath the material being sewn. The needle pierced the material and created a loop of thread through which the shuttle’s thread passed. When the needle returned to its apex, the entire stitch was locked into place.
• A special needle, with a hole in the point, was used in Howe’s machine. Traditional needles had a hole at the end opposite the point.
• Another major innovation was an automatic feeder that continuously moved the fabric through the machine, rather than requiring the operator to manipulate it.

Howe also invented and patented the modern zipper in 1851, but he never tried to make money off of this invention.

The lockstitch sewing machine, as invented by Elias Howe, revolutionized the textile industry.

Elias Howe’s Dispute with Isaac Singer

After manipulation and malfeasance on the part of a business partner, Howe wound up in a debtors’ prison in England, where he could not monitor the development of his machine. By the time he returned to the United States, many people had adapted his machine and added components to it. One of these was Isaac Singer, who created his sewing machine using the lockstitch design. He added a foot pedal and the ability to sew on a curve, rather than only a straight line.

Howe asserted that the lockstitch component of the modern sewing machine was his invention and that Singer had breached patent restrictions. Howe sued Singer for damages, and a court case followed. On July 1, 1854, the federal government acknowledged Elias Howe’s sole ownership of the modern sewing machine’s patent. This meant that not only Isaac Singer, but all other manufacturers of modern sewing machines had to pay Elias Howe royalties.

Elias Howe: Late Life and Legacy

After Elias Howe’s successful suit against Singer, his business became increasingly successful. His sewing machines were too expensive for the average family (around three hundred dollars per machine), so few machines had been sold. The royalties, however, gave Howe a steady income of around four thousand dollars a month. Much of the money he made was donated to the war effort during the Civil War. He even volunteered to serve in an infantry regiment, his infirmities keeping him confined to light duty.

Elias Howe died on October 3, 1867, in New York, after renewing his patent. He reported having made around two million dollars from the use of the lockstitch modern sewing machine.

Elias Howe: Impact on the Textile Industry

Elias Howe was not merely a businessman and inventor. His sewing machine revolutionized the process of making textiles and allowed people to make many more textiles in a day than they had previously. A tailor in New York City was able to create suits in six days rather than three weeks. With the influx of new immigrants and the economic and infrastructure developments of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, sewing factories and other textile-related mass-personnel facilities began to proliferate across the United States, especially in larger cities.

Lesson Summary

Elias Howe was an inventor during the middle of the Second Industrial Revolution. He was born in Massachusetts, on July 9, 1819, and got much of his education in machinery on the job in factories and machine shops. He developed a unique type of sewing machine that enabled people to create textile products at a much faster rate, a boon, considering the increased rate of cotton cultivation and harvesting in the southern United States.

The sewing machine designed by Elias Howe had several unique parts, including the lockstitch mechanism. Howe worked to make it as efficient as possible, and he fought to preserve his status as the inventor of the modern sewing machine. He won a long patent suit against Isaac Singer, who had used his designs to create another sewing machine. During the outbreak of the Civil War, Howe donated part of his salary to fund the war effort and even volunteered to serve. He survived the war and went on to become a very wealthy man. He died in 1867 when he was forty-eight years old.

Elias Howe’s Early Life

Elias Howe was born on July 9, 1819, in Spencer, Massachusetts. Howe was born with a disability that left him weak in one arm, which may have led his inspiration to invent a functioning sewing machine to help ease the manual aspect of producing garments. He left home at the age of 16 in order to apprentice in a machine worker’s shop and learn the intricacies of manufacturing. However, Howe’s disability and a lull in the economy forced him to relocate to Boston and work in a friend’s machine shop. At this shop, the dreams for inventing a reliable sewing machine started for Howe.

The disability would often cause a great deal of fatigue and pain that limited Howe’s ability to perform manual labor. He had married by the time he moved to Boston and had to find ways to provide for his family. His sewing machine, if successful, could solve the financial problems for the family with Howe’s disability limiting his options for steady work.

Success as an Inventor

Success did not come quickly for Howe with his new invention and he had a difficult time marketing the sewing machine to the local population. Onlookers at Howe’s exhibits showed doubt with the ability of the machine to be a reliable replacement to seam stitch employees and tailors. Many individuals had attempted to invent a reliable and efficient sewing machine since the 18th century, but Howe was able to produce a machine that was much more effective and efficient compared to its predecessors. The machine produced by Howe featured a shuttle that was located underneath cloth that created a lock stitch, or an overlapping thread stitch, that was not available in previous sewing machine prototypes. Howe did not find success initially with the machine and moved to England in order to help increase his odds for financial gain.

Not finding success in England either, Howe returned to the United States in 1849. Upon his arrival, he had discovered that another inventor, Isaac Singer, had been marketing a sewing machine and had created a successful business with the machine that was using the patents of Howe. Having to defend his patent and infringements from Singer and other manufacturers, Howe went to court to ensure he was provided royalties for his invention. The court ruled in Howe’s favor in 1856 and he earned the millions on his invention he had envisioned. Howe was finally able to provide financial support for his family that he desired.

Elias Howe

Later Life

After the massive success of his sewing machine, Howe continued to invent various machines and improvements to the textile industry. In 1865, Howe began his own company with his sewing machine patents and other inventions, which included an early form of zipper for textiles. Howe gained massive wealth with his inventions and his company was passed to his three sons. He contributed vast amount of donations to the Union Army during the Civil War and even volunteered for his local regiment, although his age and disability did not allow him to participate in actual battles.

Howe was not able to enjoy his wealth and success for a long period of time. In 1867, he passed away at the age of 48 and his sons carried on his business ventures upon his death. It is estimated that Howe earned at least two million dollars based on his sewing machine patent (which equaled well over 60 million dollars in today’s rate!).

Summary

Although Elias Howe was not the first inventor with the idea of a sewing machine, his refinements to previous inventions helped create an efficient and reliable machine that helped change the textile industry. Howe earned millions based on his invention and was able to leave his mark on the Industrial Revolution that changed the world beginning in the 18th century. His fight to preserve his patents and persevere through his disability helped him become one of the most popular and successful inventors of the 19th century.

Elias Howe Jr. (1819–1867) was an inventor of one of the first working sewing machines. This Massachusetts man began as an apprentice in a machine shop and came up with an important combination of elements for the first lock stitch sewing machine. But rather than making and selling machines, Howe made his fortune by initiating court suits against his competitors who he felt had infringed on his patents.

Early Life

Elias Howe Jr. was born in Spencer, Massachusetts on July 9, 1819. His father Elias Howe Sr. was a farmer and a miller, and he and his wife Polly had eight children. Elias attended some primary school, but at the age of six, he gave up school to help his brothers make cards used to manufacture cotton.

At 16, Howe took his first full-time job as a machinist’s apprentice, and in 1835 he moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, to work in the textile mills. He lost his job when the economic crash of 1837 closed the mills, and he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work in a business which carded hemp. In 1838, Howe moved to Boston, where he found work in a machinist’s shop. In 1840, Elias married Elizabeth Jennings Howe, and they had three children, Jane Robinson Howe, Simon Ames Howe, and Julia Maria Howe.

In 1843, Howe began work on a new sewing machine. Howe’s machine was not the first sewing machine: The first patent for a chain stitch machine was issued to an Englishman named Thomas Sant in 1790, and in 1829, Frenchman Barthelemy Thimonnier invented and patented a machine which used a modified chain stitch, and manufactured 80 working sewing machines. Thimonnier’s business came to an end when 200 tailors rioted, ransacked his factory and smashed the machines.

Invention of the Sewing Machine

In point of fact, however, the sewing machine cannot truly be said to have been invented by any one person. Instead, it was the result of numerous incremental and complementary inventive contributions. To create a working sewing machine, one needed:

1. The ability to sew a lock stitch. Common to all modern machines today, a lock stitch connects two separate threads, top and bottom, to form a secure and straight seam. 
2. A needle with an eye in the pointed end
3. A shuttle to carry the second thread 
4. A continuous source of thread (a spool)
5. A horizontal table
6. An arm overhanging the table that contains a vertically-positioned needle
7. A continuous feed of cloth, synchronized with the movements of the needle 
8. Tension controls for the thread to give slack when needed
9. A presser foot to hold the cloth in place with each stitch
10. The ability to sew in either straight or curved lines

The first of these elements invented was the eye-pointed needle, which was patented at least as early as the mid-18th century, and as many as five more times afterward. Howe’s technological contribution was to mechanize a lock stitch by building a process with an eye-pointed needle and a shuttle to carry the second thread. He made his fortune, however, not by manufacturing sewing machines, but as a «patent troll»—someone who flourishes by suing those who were manufacturing and selling machines based in part on his patent.  

Howe’s Contribution to the Sewing Machine

Howe got his idea from overhearing a conversation between an inventor and a businessman, talking about what a great idea the sewing machine was, but how difficult it was to achieve. He decided to attempt to mechanize the movements of his wife’s hands as she sewed a chain stitch. Chain stitches were made with a single thread and loops to create the seams. He watched her carefully and made several attempts, all of which failed. After a year, Howe came to the conclusion that although he could not replicate the particular stitch his wife was using, he could add a second thread to lock the stitches together—the lock stitch. It was not until late in 1844 that he was able to plan out a way to mechanize the lock stitch, but he found he did not have the financial means to construct a model.

Howe met and made a partnership with George Fisher, a Cambridge coal and wood merchant, who was able to give Howe both the financial support he needed, and a place to work on his new version. In May 1845, Howe had a working model and exhibited his machine to the public in Boston. Although some of the tailors were convinced that it would ruin the trade, the machine’s innovative characteristics eventually won their support.

At 250 stitches a minute, Howe’s lock stitch mechanism out-stitched the output of five hand seamstresses with a reputation for speed, completing in one hour what took the sewers 14.5 hours. Elias Howe took out US Patent 4,750 for his lock stitch sewing machine on September 10, 1846, in New Hartford, Connecticut.

The Sewing Machine Wars

In 1846, Howe’s brother Amasa went to England to meet William Thomas, a corset, umbrella, and valise manufacturer. This man eventually bought one of Howe’s prototype machines for £250 and then paid Elias to come to England and run the machine for three pounds a week. It was not a good deal for Elias: At the end of nine months he was fired, and he returned to New York, penniless and having lost what was left during the voyage, to find his wife dying of consumption. He also discovered that his patent had been infringed.

While Howe was in England, numerous advances on the technology occurred, and in 1849, his rival Isaac M. Singer was able to put all the elements together to make the first commercially viable machine—Singer’s machine could make 900 stitches in a minute. Howe went to Singer’s office and demanded $2,000 in royalties. Singer didn’t have it, because they hadn’t sold any machines yet. 

In fact, none of the machines that had been invented were getting off the ground. There was a terrific amount of skepticism about the practicality of the machines, and there was a cultural bias against machinery in general («Luddites») and against women using machinery. Labor unions agitated against their use, as tailors could see these machines would put them out of business. And, Elias Howe, soon to be joined by other patent-owners, began suing for patent infringement and settling for licensing fees. That process slowed the ability of manufacturers to make and innovate machines.

Howe persisted and won his first court case in 1852. In 1853, 1,609 machines were sold in the U.S. In 1860, that number had risen to 31,105, the same year that Howe boasted he had gained $444,000 in profits from licensing fees, nearly $13.5 million in today’s dollars. 

The Sewing Machine Combination

In the 1850s, manufacturers were inundated by court cases because there were too many patents which covered individual elements of the working machines. It wasn’t just Howe who was suing; it was the owners of many of the smaller patents suing and countersuing one another. This situation is known as a «patent thicket» today.

In 1856, attorney Orlando B. Potter, who represented Grover & Baker, a sewing machine manufacturer who held a patent for a working chain stitch process, had a solution. Potter suggested that the relevant patent owners—Howe, Singer, Grover & Baker, and the most prolific manufacturer of the era, Wheeler and Wilson—should combine their patents into a patent pool. Those four patent-holders collectively owned the patents that covered the 10 elements. Each member of the Sewing Machine Combination would pay into a collective account a $15 license fee for each machine they produced. Those funds were used to build a war chest for ongoing external litigation, and then the rest would be split equitably among the owners.

All of the owners agreed, except for Howe, who wasn’t making any machines at all. He was convinced to join the consortium by the promise of a special royalty fee of $5 per machine sold in the United States, and $1 for every machine exported. 

While the Combination faced its own issues, including accusations of being a monopoly, the number of litigated cases did drop and manufacturing of the machines began.

Death and Legacy

After successfully defending his right to a share in the profits of other sewing machine manufacturers, Howe saw his annual income jump from $300 to more than $2,000 dollars a year. During the Civil War, he donated a portion of his wealth to equip an infantry regiment for the Union Army and served in the regiment as a private.

Elias Howe, Jr., died in Brooklyn, New York, on October 3, 1867, a month after his sewing machine patent expired. At the time of his death, his profits from his invention were estimated to total two million dollars, what would be $34 million today. A version of his innovative mechanization of the lock stitch is still available on most modern sewing machines.

Sources

• «Elias Howe, Jr.» Geni. (2018).
• Jack, Andrew B. «The Channels of Distribution for an Innovation: The Sewing-Machine Industry in America, 1860–1865.» Explorations in Entrepreneurial History 9:113–114 (1957).
• Mossoff, Adam. «The Rise and Fall of the First American Patent Thicket: The Sewing Machine War of the 1850s » Arizona Law Review 53 (2011): 165–211. Print.
• «Obituary: Elias Howe, Jr.» The New York Times (October 5, 1867). Times Machine.
• Wagner, Stefan. «Are ‘Patent Thickets’ Smothering Innovation?» Yale Insights, April 22, 2015. Web