Who invented the sewing machine?

与如此多的发明一样，很难知道谁发明了缝纫机。相互冲突的专利办事处的历史报告和混合使得难以抓住谁是第一个创建有效设计的谁。并非所有那些符合本发明的人甚至都有一个功能机器。许多业余爱好发明者提出了早期版本，但这篇文章中的名字是那些通常在讨论中的特征。无论这些工程师都发明了缝纫机，他们都有重要作用。尽管有许多挫折的持久性，但为我们提供了彻底改变纺织业的技术，并继续发展起来！

Charles Weisenthal，1755年

Weisenthal was a German mechanic working in London. Financed by the British nobility, he invented a machine with a two-pointed needle. It worked by shuttling the thread back and forth through the cloth to produce a crude stitch. This machine didn’t tighten the stitches as intended and didn’t manage to achieve the required tension to match the work produced by manual sewing. This design was ultimately abandoned but it is worth noting as a precursor to the later more successful designs!

Thomas Saint, 1790

Saint was an English cabinet maker and hobby inventor. He realised that the needle didn’t have to pass all the way through the material for the machine to produce a stitch. Other attempts to invent a sewing machine had ineffectually tried to mimic the process of manual sewing, so this idea was revolutionary. The patent for his machine was grouped together with several others he was filing at the time relating to bookbinding and was essentially forgotten about for over 100 years. His machine has all of the attributes of modern sewing machines as we know them. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Saint actually built the machine he designed. A working replica was built by William Newton Wilson years later based on Saint’s patent, but he did have to make some modifications before it would work completely.

Barthelemy Thiwonnier，1830

Thimonnier was a French tailor who invented one of the first functioning sewing machines. It used a hooked tambour needle and produced a simple chain stitch which effectively joined cloth as intended. The operator had to feed the material by hand, but the machine could sew any length of seam, including curved seams. He built 80 machines using this design and put them to use in a factory in Paris producing uniforms for the French army. Unfortunately for him, the French revolution meant it was a time of conflict in the city. Local tailors were afraid that this machine would put them out of a job and so they formed a mob which destroyed all of the machines and burned down his factory. Thimonnier fled the city with his family and continued working on new and improved versions of his sewing machine. He tried to market his Mark 3 machine in the UK and USA but by this time other inventors had made more progress and superseded his machine with designs which were more compact and technologically advanced. He ended up as part of a travelling show, displaying his sewing machine in a tent for people to view for 10 cents a time.

Elias Howe, 1844

Howe是一名美国机械师，他们在工厂工作的使用经验来发明缝纫机。他向富裕的朋友卖出了他专利的一半的收入权利，所以他能够建设它。他的机器实际上缝得很好，但一次只有六英寸。操作员需要在引脚上悬挂织物，它只能缝制直线，这使得它具有高效的。这与高价标签相结合，意味着有很少的买家。Howe试图在英国出售他的机器，但最终失败并返回NYC Penniless。他发现许多公司已经开始制作缝纫机，其中所有使用的概念在他的专利中均为中断。虽然这些机器有效地工作，但他的专利法诉诸这些制造商以及他向所有试图建造和销售类似机器的所有制造商负责的过高的许可费用使他成为世界上最富有的人。

Isaac Merritt Singer, 1851

歌手是一个美国发明家,演员和业务ssman. He did not invent the sewing machine, but he did develop a practical and efficient design for one based on an existing machine he had been asked to repair. He patented this design and was famous for his marketing, mass-production techniques, and hire-purchase systems which offered credit so customers could pay in instalments. This made Singer a household name. It also caused a conflict with Howe. Singer saw that Howe’s patent covered almost any machine it was possible to build, as it covered the use of an eye-pointed needle and shuttle. In an attempt to challenge the patent, he located an inventor named Walter Hunt who had produced a sewing machine with a needle and shuttle years earlier in around 1833.

沃尔特狩猎，1833年

狩猎是一个美国机械发明了一种西海鳟g machine which worked in a similar way to Howe’s years before Howe’s patent was registered. He invented many products which are still widely used today, including the safety pin, but never truly realised the potential value of these ideas. Although Howe had essentially reinvented his machine, as Hunt had failed to patent his own design, he received none of the profits. It is widely believed that Hunt deliberately didn’t patent his sewing machine as he thought such an invention would result in seamstresses being unable to find work. Singer encouraged Hunt to defend his invention against Howe in court, but the judge decided in favour of Howe. Hunt finally patented his lockstitch machine in 1854.

接下来发生了什么？

在此之后，竞争缝纫机公司（称为缝纫机战争）之间有多年的诉讼和专利纠纷，最终在形成“缝纫机组合”的形成中。这一前所未有的举动创造了基本上是一个专利池的卡特尔，这让他们控制了未来14年的缝纫机生产。

Industrial sewing machines today

虽然了解工业缝纫机的历史很有意思，但重要的是，设计仍在继续发展！每个可想到的应用程序现在都有数千种不同类型的缝纫机。甚至看似小的进步，如Juki的自动螺纹修剪器的发明，对全球纺织业产生了很大影响。我们还没有完成发明！如果您正在寻找最先进的工业缝纫机，请联系我们友好的团队，他们将推荐最适合您的产品。您可以通过网站或VIA联系方式与我们联系info@ae-sewingmachines.co.uk

You can learn more about the invention of the sewing machine and the conflicts surrounding it here:

http://ismacs.net/sewing_machine_articles/who_invented_the_se_sewing_machine.html.