learner's place in a machine shop where cotton-spinning 

 machinery was made and repaired. 



In 1837, when a financial panic hit the country, Howe 

 lost his job. He then decided to go to Boston, and this 

 marked a turning point in his career. In Boston he met 

 Ari Davis, a maker of mariners' instruments and scien- 

 tific apparatus. Howe began to work in Davis' shop, 

 a place to which inventors often came to ask advice 

 about their ideas. Davis sometimes helped them, but 

 just as often he shouted at them in anger — he is said to 

 have been one of the noisiest men in Boston. One day 

 Howe overheard his employer bellowing at a man who 

 had brought a knitting machine to the shop to seek 

 Davis' advice. "Why are you wasting your time over a 

 knitting machine?" said Davis, "Take my advice, try 

 something that will pay. Make a sewing machine." 

 "It can't be done," was the reply. "Can't be done?" 

 shouted Davis, "Don't tell me that. VVh> — I can make 

 a sewing machine myself." "If you do." interrupted 

 the capitalist, "I can make an independent fortune for 

 you." Davis, like most men of many words, often 

 talked of more than he planned to do. He never 

 attempted to invent a sewing machine. 



But the loud voices interested Howe, who, it is said, 

 determined then that he would produce a sewing ma- 

 chine and win the fortune that the prosperous-looking 

 man had asserted was waiting for such a deed. A kind 

 of lameness since birth had made physical tasks painful 

 for Howe, and he perhaps felt that this would offer an 

 opportunity to become independent of hard physical 

 work. 



After marrying on a journeyman machinist's pay of 

 $9 a week, Howe's health worsened and by 1843 was 

 so bad that he had to stop work for days at a time. His 

 wilr was forced to take in sewing to maintain the family. 

 It was the sight of his wife toiling at her stitches together 

 with the pressure of poverty that recalled to Howe his 

 earlier interest in a machine to sew. He decided to 

 make an earnest attempt to invent one. Watching his 

 wife fin hours at a time, he tried to visualize a machine 

 that would duplicate the motions of the arm. After 

 many trials, he conceived the idea of using an eye-pointed 

 needle in combination with a shuttle to form a stitch. 

 It is possible that, as some authors state, the solution 

 appeared to him in a dream, a manifestation of the 

 subconscious at work. Others have suggested that he 

 may have learned of Hunt's machine. There is a gen- 

 eral similarity in the two, not only in the combination 

 of eye-pointed needle and shuttle but in the overhanging 

 arm and vertical cloth suspension. 



After conceiving the idea, whatever his inspiration, 

 Howe determined to devote all of his time to producing 

 a working model of his machine. Elias' father, who 

 had then started a factory for splitting palm leaves in 

 Cambridge, gave him permission to set up a latin ami 



Figure 135.— Elias Howe, Jr., 1819-1867. From 

 an oil painting in the Smithsonian Institution 

 presented by the inventor's grandson, Elias 

 Howe Stockwell. (Smithsonian photo 622.) 



a few tools in the garret of the factory. Elias moved his 

 family to Cambridge. Soon after his arrival, unfortu- 

 nately, the building burned down, and Howe despaired 

 of finding a place to work. He had a friend, however, 

 in George Fisher, who had just come into a small 

 inheritance, and Howe persuaded him to enter into 

 partnership with him for the development of the machine. 

 Fisher agreed to board Howe and his family, which now 

 included two children, while Howe completed the model. 

 Fisher also agreed to supply 5500 for material and tools 

 in exchange for a half interest in a patent if one was 

 obtained. 



At long last Howe was able to spend his full time and 

 concentration on building his machine. His family was 

 being fed and had a roof over its head. Within a few 

 months Howe had completed a model and by April 

 1845 had sewed his first seam (see fig. 14). In July of 

 that year he sewed all the principal seams of two suits of 

 wool clothes, one for George Fisher and one for himself. 



Several efforts were made to solicit public interest in 

 the new machine. One was installed in a public hall 

 in Boston, and a tailor was employed to operate it at 

 three times the regular wage. The reception was similar 

 to that of Thimonnier's: crowds came to see the "con- 

 traption," but, when Howe tried to interest large clothing 



139 



