sewing device into commercial operation was Bar- 

 thelemy Thimonnier, 18 a French tailor. After several 

 years of fruitless effort he invented a machine for 

 which he received a French patent in 1 830. 19 The 

 machine (fig. 8) made a chainstitch by means of a 

 barbed or hooked needle. The vertically held needle 

 worked from an overhanging arm. The needle 

 thrust through the fabric laid on the horizontal table, 

 caught a thread from the thread carrier and Iooper 

 beneath the table, and brought a loop to the surface 

 of the fabric. When the process was repeated the 

 second loop became enchained in the first. The 

 needle was moved downward by the depression of a 

 cord-connected foot treadle and was raised by the 

 action of a spring. The fabric was fed through the 

 stitching mechanism manually, and a regular rate of 

 speed had to be maintained by the operator in order 

 to produce stitches of equal length. A type of re- 

 tractable thimble or presser foot was used to hold the 

 fabric down as required. 



The needle, and the entire machine, was basically 

 an attempt to mechanize tambour embroidery, with 

 which the inventor was quite familiar. Although 

 this work, which served as the machine's inspiration, 

 was always used for decorative embroidery, Thimon- 

 nier saw the possibilities of using the stitch for utili- 

 tarian purposes. By 1841 he had 80 machines 

 stitching army clothing in a Paris shop. But a mob 

 of tailors, fearing that the invention would rob them 

 of a livelihood, broke into the shop and destroyed 

 the machines. Thimonnier fled Paris, penniless. 

 Four years later he had obtained new financial help, 

 improved his machine to produce 200 stitches a 

 minute, and organized the first French sewing-ma- 

 chine company. 20 The Revolution of 1848, however, 

 brought this enterprise to an early end. Before new 

 support could be found other inventors had appeared 

 with better machines, and Thimonnier's was passed 

 by. In addition to the two French patents Thimon- 

 nier also received a British patent with his associate 

 Jean Marie Magnin in 1848 and one in the United 

 States in 1850. He achieved no financial gain from 

 either of these and died a poor man. 



While Thimonnier was developing his chainstitch 

 machine in France, Walter Hunt,- 1 perhaps best de- 

 scribed as a Yankee mechanical genius, was working 

 on a different kind of sewing machine in the United 

 States. Sometime between 1832 and 1834 he pro- 

 duced at his shop in New York a machine that made 

 a lockstitch. 2 - This stitch was the direct result of the 

 mechanical method devised to produce the stitching 

 and represented the first occasion an inventor had not 

 attempted to reproduce a hand stitch. The lockstitch 

 required two threads, one passing through a loop in the 

 the other and both interlocking in the heart of the 

 seam. At the time Hunt did not consider the sewing 

 machine any more promising than several other in- 

 ventions that he had in mind, and, after demonstrating 

 that the machine would sew, he sold his interest in it 

 for a small sum and did not bother to patent it. 



A description — one of few ever published — and 

 sketch of a rebuilt Hunt machine (fig. 9) appeared in 

 an article in the Sewing Machine News in 1881. 23 

 The important element in the Hunt invention was 

 an eye-pointed needle working in combination with a 

 shuttle carrying a second thread. Future inventors 

 were thus no longer hampered by the erroneous idea 

 that the sewing machine must imitate the human 

 hands and fingers. Though Hunt's machine stitched 

 short, straight seams with speed and accuracy, it 

 could not sew curved or angular work. Its stitching 

 was not continuous, but had to be reset at the end of a 

 short run. The validity of Hunt's claim as the in- 

 ventor of the lockstitch and the prescribed method of 

 making it was argued many times, especially during 

 the Elias Howe patent suits of the 1850s. The de- 

 cision against Hunt was not a question of invention, 24 

 but one of right to ownership or control. Hunt did 

 little to promote his sewing machine and sold it 

 together with the right to patent to George A. 

 Arrowsmith. 



18 See Barthelemy Thimonnier's biographical sketch, p. 137. 



19 French patent issued to Barthelemy Thimonnier and M. 

 Ferrand (who was a tutor at l'Ecole des Mines, Saint- 

 Etienne, and helped finance the patent), July 17, 1830. 



20 The company was located at Villefranche-sur-Saone, but 

 no name is recorded. See J. Granger, Thimonnier et la machine 

 a coudre (1943), p. 16. 



21 See Walter Hunt's biographical sketch, p. 138. 



22 The earliest known reference in print to Walter Hunt's 

 sewing machine is in Sewing by Machinery: An Exposition of the 

 History of Patentees of Various Sewing Machines and of the Rights 

 of the Public (I. M. Singer & Co., 1853). A more detailed story 

 of Hunt's invention is in Sewing Machine News (1880-81 ), vol. 2, 

 no. 2, p. 4; no. 4, p. 5; and no. 8, pp. 3 and 8. 



» Vol. 2, no. 8, p. 3. 



-* In the opinion and decision of C. Mason, Commissioner 

 of the Patent Office, offered on May 24, 1854, for the Hunt vs. 

 Howe interference suit, Mason stated: "He [Hunt] proves that 

 in 1834 or 1835 he contrived a machine by which he actually- 

 effected his purpose of sewing cloth with considerable success." 



II 



