Figure 66. — Jones "electro motor" patent model 

 of 1871 on a Bartlett sewing machine. (Smithsonian 

 photo P-63104.) 



sewing machines did not become common until the 

 20th century, several 19th-century inventors con- 

 sidered the possibility of attaching a type of motor to 

 the machine. One was the 1871 patent of Solomon 

 Jones, who added an "electro motor" to an 1865 

 Bartlett machine (fig. 66). The attachments that 

 were developed during the latter part of the 19th 

 century numbered in the thousands; many of these 

 were superfluous. Most of the basic ones in use 

 today were developed by the 1880s and remain 

 almost unchanged. Even the recently popular home 

 zigzag machine, an outgrowth of the buttonhole 

 machine, was in commercial use by the 1870s. 



Sewing-machine improvements have been made 

 from time to time. Like other mechanical items the 

 machine has become increasingly automatic, but the 

 basic principles remain the same. One of the more 

 recent developments, patented M in 1933 by Valentine 

 Naftali et ah, is for a manufacturing machine that 

 imitates hand stitching. This machine uses a two- 

 pointed "floating needle" that is passed completely 

 through the fabric — the very idea that was attempted 



M U.S. patent 1,931,447, issued to Valentine Naftali, Henry 



Naftali, and Rudolph Naftali, Oct. 17, 1933. The Naftali 

 machines are manufactured by the American Machine and 

 Foundry Company and are called AMF Stitching Machines. 



Figure 67. — Six-cord cabled thread. 



over one hundred years ago. The machine is cur- 

 rently used by commercial manufacturers to produce 

 decorative edge-stitching that very closely resembles 

 hand stitching. 



THREAD FOR THE MACHINE 



The need for a good thread durable enough to with- 

 stand the action of machine stitching first created a 

 problem and ultimately another new industry in this 

 country. When the sewing machine was first devel- 

 oped the inventors necessarily had to use the sewing 

 thread that was available. But, although the con- 

 temporary thread was quite suitable for hand sewing, 

 it did not lend itself to the requirements of the ma- 

 chine. Cotton thread, then more commonly a three- 

 ply variety, had a glazed finish and was wiry. Silk 

 thread frequently broke owing to abrasion at the needle 

 eye. For the most part linen thread was too coarse, 

 or the fine variety was too expensive. All of the thread 

 had imperfections that went unnoticed in the hands 

 of a seamstress, but caused havoc in a machine. 



63 



