For over fifteen years, from the mid- 1830s to the 

 early 1850s, the machine dropped out of sight. When 

 the sewing-machine litigation developed in the 1850s, 

 the I. M. Singer company searched out the Hunt 

 machine, had the inventor rebuild one, 25 and 

 attempted to use this to break the Howe patent. The 

 plan did not work. The Honorable Charles Mason, 

 Patent Commissioner, reported : 



When the first inventor allows his discovery to slumber 

 for eighteen years, with no probability of its ever being 

 brought into useful activity, and when it is only resur- 

 rected to supplant and strangle an invention which has 

 been given to the public, and which has been made 

 practically useful, all reasonable presumption should be 

 in favor of the inventor who lias been the means of 

 conferring the real benefit upon the world. 26 



Hunt's machine was an invention of the 1830s, but 

 only because of the patent litigation was it ever 

 heard of again. 



During the time that a potentially successful 

 sewing machine was being invented and forgotten 

 in America, Josef Madersperger of Austria made a 

 second attempt to solve the mechanical stitching 

 problem. In 1839 he received a second patent on a 

 machine entirely different from his 1814 effort. 

 It was similar to Hunt's in that it used an eye-pointed 

 needle and passed a thread through the loop of the 

 needle-thread — the thread carried by the needle — 

 to lock the stitch. Madersperger's machine was a 

 multiple-needle quilting machine. The threaded 

 needles penetrated the fabric from below and were 

 retracted, leaving the loops on the surface. A 

 thread was drawn through the loops to produce what 

 the inventor termed a chain. The first two stitches 

 were twisted before insertion into the next two, pro- 

 ducing a type of twisted lockstitch. The mechanism 

 for feeding the cloth was faulty, however, and the 

 inventor himself stated in the specifications that much 

 remained to perfect and simplify it before its general 

 application. (This machine was illustrated [fig. 10] 

 in the Sewing Machine Times, October 25, 1907, and 

 mistakenly referred to as the 1814 model.) Mader- 

 sperger realized no financial gain from either venture 

 and died in a poorhouse in 1850. 



25 The rebuilt machine, according to a letter to the author 

 from B. F. Thompson of the Singer company, is believed to 

 have been one of the machines lost in a Singer factory fire .it 

 Elizabethport, N.J., in 1800. 



2B Op. cit. (footnote 24). 



The first ell oils of the 1840s reflected the work 

 of the earlier years. In England, Edward Newton 

 and Thomas Archbold invented and patented a 

 machine on May 4, 1841, for tambouring or orna- 

 menting the backs of gloves. Their machine used 

 a hook on the upper surface to catch the loop of 

 thread, but an eye-pointed needle from underneath 

 was used to carry the thread up through the fabric. 

 The machine was designed to use three needles for 

 three rows of chainstitching. if required. Although 

 the machine was capable of stitching two fabrics 

 together, it was never contemplated as a sewing 

 machine in the present use of the term. Their 

 British patent 8,948 stated it was for "improvements 

 in producing ornamental or tambour work in the 

 manufacture of gloves." 



The earliest American patent specifically recorded 

 as a sewing machine was U.S. patent 2,466, issued to 

 John J. Grcenough on February 21, 1842. His 

 machine was a short-thread model that made both 

 the running stitch and the backstitch. It used the 

 two-pointed needle, with eye at mid-length, which 

 was passed back and forth through the material by 

 means of a pair of pincers on each side of the seam. 

 The pincers opened and closed automatically. 

 The material to be sewn was held in clamps which 

 moved it forward between the pincers to form a 

 running stitch or moved it alternately backward 

 and forward to produce a backstitch. The clamps 

 were attached to a rack that automatically fed the 

 material at a predetermined rate according to the 

 length of stitch required. Since the machine was 

 designed for leather or other hard material, the 

 needle was preceded by an awl, which pierced a 

 hole. The machine had a weight to draw out the 

 thread and a stop-motion to stop the machinery 

 when a thread broke or became too short. The needle 

 was threaded with a short length of thread and 

 required frequent refilling. Only straight seams 

 could be stitched. The feed was continuous to the 

 length of the rack bar; then it had to be reset. The 

 motions were all obtained from the revolution of a 

 crank. It is not believed that any machines, other 

 than the patent model (fig. 1 1 ), were ever made. 

 Little is known of Greenough other than his name. 



In the succeeding year, on March 4, 1843, Benjamin 

 W. Bean received the second American sewing- 

 machine patent, U.S. patent 2,982. Like Greenough's, 

 this machine made a running stitch, but by a different 

 method. lit Bean's machine the fabric was fed 

 between the teeth of a series of gears. Held in a 



13 



