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Figure 35. — This Grover and Baker cabinet-style sewing machine of 1856 bears the serial number 5675 

 and the patent dates February 11. 1851, June 22, 1852, February 22, 1853, and May 27, 1856. (Smithsonian 

 photo 45572-F.) 



spools and eliminate the need to wind one thread 

 upon a bobbin. After much experimenting, he proved 

 that it was possible to make a seam by interlocking 

 two threads in a succession of slipknots, but he found 

 that building a machine to do this was a much more 

 difficult task. It is quite surprising that while he was 

 working on this idea, he did not stumble upon a good 

 method to produce the single-thread (as opposed to 

 Grover and Baker's two-thread) chainstitch, later 

 worked out by another. Grover was working so 

 intently on the use of two threads that apparently no 

 thought of forming a stitch with one thread had a 

 chance to develop. 



At this time Grover became a partner with another 



Boston tailor, William E. Baker, and on February 1 1, 

 1851, they were issued U.S. patent No. 7,931 for a 

 machine that did exactly what Grover had set out to 

 do; it made a double chainstitch with two threads 

 both carried on ordinary thread spools. The machine 

 (figs. 34 and 35) used a vertical eye-pointed needle 

 for the top thread and a horizontal needle for the 

 underthread. The cloth was placed on the hori- 

 zontal platform or table, which had a hole for the 

 entry of the vertical needle. When this needle 

 passed through the cloth, it formed a loop on the 

 underside. The horizontal needle passed through 

 this loop forming another loop beyond, which was 

 retained until the redescending vertical needle 



36 



