Sewing up the Competition

GUEST POST from John Bessant

‘To be or not to be…. ?’

Sooner or later an actor will find themselves declaiming those words – whether delivering Hamlet’s soliloquy or reflecting on the precarious career prospects of the thespian calling. If the answer turns out to be in the ‘not to be…’ direction then the follow-up question is what else might you be. And if you have a leaning towards high risk options you might select ‘become an entrepreneur’ as an alternative choice.

Torquay is a drama queen of a town. Displaying itself in the summer for the tourists who flock to the English Riviera, attracted by its mild weather and (occasionally) sparkling blue bay. Full of larger-than-life characters, birthplace and home of Agatha Christie and still hosting plenty of theaters to add to the offstage stories playing out in the streets. And tucked away in the town cemetery is the last resting place of one of the largest of characters, an actor and entrepreneur to the end. Isaac Merritt Singer, father of the sewing machine and responsible for much more besides.

Born in 1811 in Pittstown, New York, Singer was youngest of eight children, and from an early age learned to hustle, taking on various odd jobs including learning the skills of joinery and lathe turning. His passion for acting emerged early; when he was twelve he ran away to join an acting troupe called the Rochester Players. Even in those days acting was not a reliable profession and so when he was nineteen he worked as an apprentice machinist. A move which helped support his early days of family life; he married fifteen year old Catherine Haley and had two children with her before finally succumbing once again to the siren call of the stage and joining the Baltimore Strolling Players.

His machinist studies paid off however, when in 1839 he patented a rock-drilling machine.

He’d been working with an older brother to help dig the Illinois waterway and saw how he could improve the process; it worked and he sold it for $2,000 (around $150,000 in today’s money). This windfall gave him the chance to return to the dramatic world and he formed a troupe known as the “Merritt Players”.

On tour he appeared onstage under the name “Isaac Merritt”, with a certain Mary Ann Sponsler who called herself “Mrs. Merritt”; backstage they looked after a family which had begun growing in 1837 and had swollen to what became eight children, The tour lasted about five years during which time he became engaged to her (neglecting to mention that he was already married).

Fortunately he’d kept up his craftsman skills interests and developed and patented a “machine for carving wood and metal” on April 10, 1849. Financially struggling once again he moved the family back to New York City, hoping to market his machine. He built a prototype and more important, met a bookseller, G. B. Zieber who was to become his partner and long-suffering financier.

Unfortunately the prototype was destroyed in a fire; Zieber persuaded Singer to make a new start in Boston in 1850 using space kindly offered by Orson Phelps who ran a small machine shop. Orders for his wood cutting machine were not, however, forthcoming so he turned his inventive eye to the world of sewing machines.

A short history of sewing machines…

People started sewing by hand some 20,000 years ago, where the first needles were made from bones or animal horns and the thread made from animal sinew. But it remained a largely manual process until the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century and the growing demand for clothing which manual labor couldn’t really meet. Demand pull innovation prompted plenty of entrepreneurs to try their hand at improving on the basic manual process.

Their task wasn’t easy; sewing is a complex task involving different materials whose shape isn’t fixed in the way that wood or metal can be. And manual labor was still cheaply available so the costs of a machine to replace it would also need to be low. Not surprisingly many of the early inventors died in straitened circumstances.

A German-born engineer working in England, Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal, can lay claim to one of the first patents, awarded in Britain for a mechanical device to aid the art of sewing, in 1755. But this was more of a mechanical aid; it wasn’t until 1790 that an English cabinet maker by the name of Thomas Saint was granted a patent for five types of varnishes and their uses, a machine for ‘spinning, twisting, and doubling the thread’, a machine for ‘stitching, quilting, or sewing’, and a machine for ‘platting or weaving’. A specification which didn’t quite include the kitchen sink but came pretty close to covering it!

His very broad-ranging patent somewhat obscured its real value – the machine for ‘stitching, quilting, or sewing’. (So much so that when the Patent Office republished older patents and arranged them into new classes, it was placed into ‘wearing apparel’ rather than ‘sewing and embroidering’).

But his machine brought together several novel features including a mechanism for feeding material into the machine and a vertical needle. It was particularly designed for working with leather to make saddles and bridles but it was adapted for other materials like canvas to make ship sails.

Saint’s vision somewhat outstripped his ability to make and sell the machine but his underlying model introduced the key elements of what became the basic configuration – the ‘dominant design’ – for sewing machines. Much later, in 1874, a sewing machine manufacturer, William Newton Wilson, found Saint’s drawings in the UK Patent Office, made a few adjustments and built a working machine, which is still on display today on the Science Museum in London).

Saint wasn’t alone in seeing the possibilities in mechanization of sewing. Innovation often involves what’s called ‘swarming’ – many players see the potential and experiment with different designs, borrowing and building on these as they converge towards something which solves the core problem and eventually becomes the ‘dominant design’.

In the following years various attempts were made to develop a viable machine, some more successful than others. In 1804, two Englishmen, Thomas Stone and James Henderson, built a simple sewing device and John Duncan in Scotland offered an embroidery machine. An Austrian tailor, Josef Madersperger, presented his first working sewing machine publicly in 1814. And in 1818 John Doge and John Knowles invented America’s first sewing machine, but it could only sew a few bits of fabric before breaking.

But wasn’t until 40 years after Saint’s patent that a viable machine emerged. Barthelemy Thimonnier, a French tailor, invented a machine that used a hooked needle and one thread, creating a chain stitch. The patent for his machine was issued on 17 July 1830, and in the same year, he and his partners opened the first machine-based clothing manufacturing company in the world to create uniforms for the French Army.

(Unfortunately sewing machine inventors seem to have a poor track record as far as fire risk is concerned; Thimonnier’s factory was burned down, reportedly by workers fearful of losing their livelihood, following the issuing of the patent).

Over in America Walter Hunt joined the party bringing his contribution in 1832 in the form of the first lock-stitch machine. Up till then machines had used a simple chain stitch but the lock stitch was a big step forward since it allowed for tighter more durable seams of the kind needed in many clothes. It wasn’t without its teething troubles and Hunt only sold a handful of machines, he only bothered to patent his idea much later in 1854.

Meanwhile British inventors Newton and Archibold improved on the emerging technology with a better needle and the use of two pressing surfaces to keep the pieces of fabric in position, in 1841. And John Greenough registered a patent for the first sewing machine in the United States in 1842.

Each of these machines had some of the important elements but it was only in 1844 that they converged in the machine built by English inventor John Fisher. All should have been well – except that the apparent curse of incomplete filing (which seems to have afflicted many sewing machine inventors) struck him down. His patent was delayed and he failed to get the recognition he probably deserves as the architect of the modern sewing machine.

Instead it was Elias Howe from America with his 1845 machine (which closely resembled Fisher’s) who took the title. His patent was for “a process that uses thread from 2 different sources….” building on the idea of a lockstitch which William Hunt had actually developed thirteen years earlier. Hunt’s failure to patent this meant that Howe could eventually reap the not inconsiderable rewards, earning him $5 for every sewing machine sold in America which used the lockstitch principle.

Howe’s machine was impressive but like all the others was slow to take off and he decided to try and market it in Europe, sailing for England. Leaving the American market open for other entrants, Including one Isaac Merritt Singer who patented his machine in 1851.

Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Singer’s machine

Singer became interested in sewing machines by trying to make them better. Orson Phelps (in whose machine shop Singer was working) had recently started making sewing machines for the modestly successful Lerow and Blodgett Company. Zieber and Phelps convinced Singer to take a look at the machine to see if he could improve upon its design.

Legend has it that Singer was sceptical at first, questioning its market potential. “You want to do away with the only thing that keeps women quiet?” But they managed to persuade him and in 1850, the three men formed a partnership, with Zieber putting up the money, Singer doing the inventing, and Phelps the manufacturing.

Instead of repairing the machine, Singer redesigned it by installing a treadle to help power the fabric feed and rethinking the way the shuttle mechanism worked, replacing the curved needle with a straight one.

Like Henry Ford after him Singer’s gift was not in pure invention but rather in adapting and recombining different elements. His eventual ddesign for a machine combined elements of Thimonnier, Hunt and Howe’s machines; the idea of using a foot treadle to leave both hands free dated back to the Middle Ages.

Importantly, the new design caused less thread breakage with the innovation of an arm-like apparatus that extended over the worktable, holding the needle at its end. It could sew 900 stitches per minute, a dramatic improvement over an accomplished seamstress’s rate of 40 on simple work. On an item as complex as a shirt the time required could be reduced from fifteen hours to less than one.

Singer obtained US Patent number 8294 for his improvements on August 12, 1851.

But having perfected the machine there were a couple of obstacles in the way of their reaping the rewards from transforming the market. First was the problem of economics; their machine (and others like it) opened up the possibility of selling for home use – but at $125 each ($4,000 in 2022 dollars) the machines were expensive and slow to catch on.

And then there was the small matter of sorting out the legal tangles involved in the intellectual property rights to sewing machinery.

Climbing out of the patent thicket

Elias Howe had been understandably annoyed to find Singer’s machine using elements of his own patent and duly took him to court for patent infringement. Singer tried to argue that Howe had actually infringed upon William Hunt’s original idea; unfortunately for him since Hunt hadn’t patented it that argument failed. The judge ruled that Hunt’s lock-stitch idea was free for anyone – including Howe – to use. Consequently, Singer was forced to pay a lump sum and patent royalties to Howe.

(Interestingly if John Fisher’s UK patent hadn’t have been filed wrongly, he too would have been involved in the law suit since both Howe and Singer’s designs were almost identical to the one Fisher created).

Sounds complicated? It gets worse, mainly because they weren’t the only ones in the game. Inventors like Allen B. Wilson were slugging it out with others like John Bradshaw; both of them had developed and patented devices which improved on Singer and Howe’s ideas. Wilson partnered up with Nathaniel Wheeler to produce a new machine which used a hook instead of a shuttle and much quieter and smoother in operation. That helped the Wheeler & Wilson Company to make and sell more machines in the 1850s and 1860s than any other manufacturer. Wilson also invented the feed mechanism that is still used on every sewing machine today, drawing the cloth through the machine in a smooth and even fashion. Others like Charles Miller patented machinery to help with accessories like buttonhole stitching.

The result was that in the 1850s a rapidly increasing number of companies were vying with each other not only to produce sewing machines but also to file lawsuits for patent infringement by the others. It became known as the Sewing Machine War – and like most wars risked ending up benefiting no-one. It’s an old story and often a vicious and expensive one in which the lawyers end up the only certain winners.

Fortunately this one, though not without its battles, was to arrive at a mutually successful cease-fire. In 1856, the major manufacturers (including Singer, Wheeler & Wilson) met in Albany, New York and Orlando Potter, president of the Grover and Baker Company, proposed that, rather than squander their profits on litigation, they pool their patents.

They agreed to form the Sewing Machine Combination, merging nine of the most important patents; they were able to secure the cooperation of Elias Howe by offering him a royalty on every sewing machine manufactured. Any other manufacturer had to obtain a license for $15 per machine. This lasted until 1877 when the last patent expired.

Singing the Singer song

So the stage was finally set for Isaac Singer to act his most famous role – one which predated Henry Ford as one of the fathers of mass production. In late 1857, Singer opened the world’s first facility for mass producing something other than firearms in New York and was soon able to cut production costs. Sales volume increased rapidly; in 1855 he’d sold 855 machines, a year later over 2500 and in 1858 his production reached 3,591 and he opened three more New York-based manufacturing plants.

Efficiency in production allowed the machines to drop in price to $100, then $60, then $30, and demand exploded. By 1860 and selling over 13,000 machines Singer became the largest manufacturer of sewing machines in the world. Ten years later and that number had risen tenfold; twenty years on they sold over half a million machines a year.

Like Ford he was something of a visionary, seeing the value of a systems approach to the problem of making and selling sewing machines. His was a recombinant approach, taking ideas like standardised and interchangeable parts, division of labour, specialisation of key managerial roles and intensive mechanisation to mass produce and bring costs down.

His thespian skills were usefully deployed in the marketing campaign; amongst other stunts he staged demonstrations of the sewing machine in city centre shop windows where bystanders could watch a (skilled) young woman effortlessly sewing her own creations. And he was famous for his ‘Song of the Shirt’ number which he would deliver as background accompaniment in events at which, once again, an attractive and accomplished seamstress would demonstrate the product.

It’s often easy to overlook the contribution of others in the innovation story – not least when the chief protagonist is an actor with a gift for self-publicity. Much of the development of the Singer business was actually down to the ideas and efforts of his partner at the time Edward Cabot Clark. It was Clark, for example, who came up with the concept of instalment purchasing plans which literally opened the door to many salesmen trying to push their product. He also suggested the model of trading in an older model for one with newer features – something enthusiastically deployed a century later in the promotion of a host of products from smart-phones to saloon cars.

Singer and Clark worked to create the necessary infrastructure to support scaling the business. They opened attractive showrooms, developed a rapid spare parts distribution system and employed a network of repair mechanics.

This emerging market for domestic sewing machines attracted others; in 1863 an enterprising tailor, Ebenezer Butterick, began selling dress patterns and helped open up the home dressmaking business. Magazines, pattern books and sewing circles emerged as women saw the opportunities in doing something which could bring both social and economic benefit to their lives. Schools and colleges began offering courses to teach the required skills, many of them helpfully sponsored by the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

It wasn’t just a new business opportunity; this movement provided important impetus to a redefinition of the role of women in the home and their access to activity which could become more than a simple hobby. Singer’s advertising put women in control with advertisements suggesting that their machine was ‘… sold only by the maker directly to the women of the family’. Charitable groups such as the Ladies Work Society and the Co-operative Needlewoman’s Society emerged aimed at helping poorer women find useful skills and respectable employment in sewing.

By 1863 Singer’s machine had become America’s most popular sewing machine and was on its way to a similar worldwide role. They pioneered international manufacturing, particularly in their presence in Europe having first tried to enter the overseas market through licensing their patents to others. Quality and service problems forced them to rethink and they moved instead to setting up their own facilities.

Their Clydebank complex in Scotland, opened in 1885, became the world’s largest sewing machine factory with two main manufacturing buildings on three levels. One made domestic machines, the other industrial models; the whole was overseen by a giant 60 metre high tower with the name ‘Singer ‘ emblazoned on it and with four clock faces, the world’s largest. Employing over 3500 people it turned out 8000 sewing machines a week. By the 1900s, it was making over 1.5 million machines to be sold around the world.

Estimates place Singer’s market share at 80% of global production, from 1880 through at least 1920 and beyond. Over one thousand different models for industrial and home use were offered. Singer had 1,700 stores in the United States and 4,300 overseas, supported by 60,000 salesmen.

Image: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Off-stage activities

Singer was a big man with a commanding presence and a huge appetite for experiences. But he had no need of a Shakespeare to conjure up a plot for his own dramatic personal life, his was quite rich enough. The kind where it might help to have a few thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean to place between you and what’s going on when your past is suddenly and rapidly catching up with you…

(Pay attention, this gets more complicated than the patent thicket).

Catherine, his first wife, had separated from him back in the 1830s but remained married to him, benefitting from his payments to her. She finally agreed to a divorce in 1860 at which point his long-suffering mistress and mother of eight of his children, Mary Ann believed Isaac was free to marry her. He wasn’t keen to change his arrangements with her b ut in any case the question became somewhat academic.

In 1860 she was riding in her carriage along Fifth Avenue in New York when she happened to see Isaac in another carriage seated alongside Mary McGonigal. One of Isaac’s employees about whom Mary Ann already had suspicions. Confronting him she discovered that not only had he fathered seven children with McGonigal but that he had also had an affair with her sister Kate!

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and Mary Ann really went for Isaac, having him arrested and charged with bigamy; he fled to London on bail taking Mary McGonigal with him. But leaving behind even more trouble; further research uncovered a fourth ‘wife’, one Mary Walters who had been one of his glamorous sewing machine demonstrators. She also added another child to the list of his offspring. The final tally of his New York wives netted a total of four families, all living in Manhattan in ignorance of each other with a total of sixteen of his children!

Isaac’s escape to England allowed him enough breathing space to pick up on another affair he had started in France the previous year with Isabella Boyer, a young Frenchwoman whose face had been the model for the Statue of Liberty. He’d managed to leave her pregnant and so she left her husband and moved to England to join Isaac, marrying him in 1863. They settled down to life on their huge estate in Devon where they had a further six children.

Legacy

Singer left behind a lot – not least a huge fortune. On his death in 1871 he was worth around $13m (which would be worth close to $400billion today). From considerably humbler beginnings he’d managed to make his way to a position where he was able to buy a sizeable plot of land near Torquay and build a grand 110 room house (Oldway) modeled on the royal palace at Versailles complete with a hall of mirrors, maze and grotto garden.

And when he was finally laid to rest it was in a cedar, silver, satin and oak-lined marble tomb in a funeral attended by over 2000 mourners.

His wider legacy is, of course, the sewing machine which formed the basis of the company he helped found and which became such a powerful symbol of industrial and social innovation. He reminds us that innovation isn’t a single flash of inspiration but an extended journey and he deployed his skills at navigating that journey in many directions. He’s of course remembered for his product innovations like the sewing machine but throughout his life he developed many ideas into serviceable (and sometimes profitable) ventures.

But he also pioneered extensive process innovation, anticipating Henry Ford’s mass production approach to change the economics of selling consumer goods and rethinking the ways in which his factories could continue to develop. He had the salesman’s gift, but his wasn’t just an easy patter to persuade reluctant adopters. Together with Edward Clark he pioneered ways of targeting and then opening up new markets, particularly in the emerging world of the domestic consumer. And he was above all a systems thinker, recognizing that the success or failure of innovation depends on thinking around a complete business model to ensure that good ideas have an architecture through which they can create value.

Isaac Singer retained his interest in drama up to his death, leaving his adopted home of Torbay with a selection of imposing theaters which still offer performances today. It can only be a matter of time before someone puts together the script for a show based on this larger than life character and the tangled web that he managed to weave.

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