The Singer sewing machine was so revolutionary that even Mahatma Gandhi, who eschewed all other machines, made an exception for it. After learning to sew on a Singer in a British jail, Gandhi called it “one of the few useful things ever invented.”
Many outside the prison population agreed. The Singer Company became one of America’s first multinational corporations, and a staggeringly successful one at that. At a time when the average American income totaled $500, Singer sewing machines were selling for $125 — and they were selling. As TIME noted, by the time Isaac Singer died in 1875, his company was turning a profit of $22 million a year.
Singer didn’t invent the first sewing machine, but the one he patented on this day, Aug. 12, in 1851, was the most practical — and the most commercially viable. Its success was a testament to Singer’s industrious spirit: he’d worked variously as an actor, a ditch digger and a cabinetmaker before striking it rich in the sewing field.
Fans of the new machine hailed from all walks of life. Among the most notable:
The publisher of America’s first fashion magazine, Lady’s Book, who gushed: “Next to the plough, [the sewing machine] is perhaps humanity’s most blessed instrument.” (After it became a fixture among dressmakers, women’s fashions changed dramatically, per TIME — “bedecked with ribbons and yards of machine-made frills.”)
The Wright brothers, who made the covering for their first airplane wing on a Singer sewing machine.
Admiral Richard Byrd, the polar explorer, who brought six of the machines along on his Antarctic expeditions.
Russia’s Czar Alexander III, who put his soldiers to work on Singer sewing machines to make 250,000 tents for the Imperial Army.
Singer himself cared less about the usefulness of the device than about the wealth it brought him, however. “I don’t care a damn for the invention. The dimes are what I’m after,” he once said, according to TIME. He was perhaps more fond of his other creation: the first payment plan, which allowed his customers to pay in installments for a machine too expensive for most to afford as a lump sum.
It was in keeping with Singer’s business ideals, then, that the company, which had diversified heavily in the 1960s and 1970s, ditched sewing machines altogether in the mid-1980s — in the face of increased competition from Asian manufacturers and a steep decline in home sewing — to focus on its more profitable aerospace division. (It spun off its sewing operations to a separate firm, which continues to manufacture under the Singer name.)
So while Singer’s invention may have impressed Gandhi, his life philosophy likely did not. Singer amassed a personal fortune of about $13 million; some of it, per TIME, “supported the 24 children that Singer fathered by two wives and at least three mistresses. He died in England at the age of 64, while constructing a half-a-million-dollar mansion that he referred to facetiously as his ‘wigwam.’”
Read more about the Singer corporation’s decision to stop making sewing machines, here in the TIME archives: Dropped Stitch
See Original Models of the Apple I and Other Iconic American Inventions
Printing Press, 1830: Issac Adams, (Unnumbered Patent)
The style of bed and platen printing press in this patent model inspired Issac Adams’ design of the later Adams Power Press, which was praised by early 19th century printers for its production of quality book work.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryTelegraph, 1837: Samuel F. B. Morse, Prototype.
Samuel F. B. Morse converted an artist’s canvas stretcher into a telegraph receiver that recorded a message as a wavy line on a strip of paper. His telegraph transmitter sent electric pulses representing letter and numbers that activated an electromagnet on the receiver.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryViolin, 1852: William S. Mount, (Patent No. 8981).
William S. Mount proposed creating violins with concave or hollow backs. This patent model represented a design innovation that would minimize the strain on the violin soundboard and avoid interference with the “sonorous and vibrating qualities” of the instrument.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryTypewriter, 1868: C. Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden & Samuel W. Soule (Patent No. 79265).
This patent model was created by the three Milwaukee inventors who made progress towards a viable typewriting machine. Six years later, Remington & Sons produced the first commercially successful machine, bearing the names of Sholes and Glidden.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistorySewing Machine, 1873: Helen Blanchard, (Patent No. 141987).
This patent model for an improvement in sewing machines introduced the buttonhole stitch. Blanchard received some 28 patents, many having to do with sewing. She is best remembered for another overstitch sewing invention, the “zigzag.”
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryCamera Shutter, 1879: Eadweard Muybridge, (Patent No. 212865).
This “Method and Apparatus for Photographing Objects in Motion” was adapted to photographic equipment. As demonstrated with this patent model, it could produce images of subjects in rapid motion. It was used by Eadweard Muybridge in his celebrated animal locomotion photography.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryIncandescent Lamp, 1881: Thomas Edison (Patent No. 239373).
Thomas Edison submitted this model to patent a variation on his newly invented light bulb. Although he never put this design into production, this lamp could be disassembled to replace a burned-out filament.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryHigh-Strength Fiber, 1965: Stephanie Kwolek (Patent Nos. 3819587 and RE30352).
Kwolek’s 1965 discovery at DuPont of strong polymer fibers resulted in DuPont Kevlar, best known for its use in bullet-resistant body armorCourtesy Hagley Museum and LibraryApple I Computer, 1976: Steve Jobs (Patent No. 7166791) & Steve Wozniak (Patent No. 4136359). In 1976 the first form of computer designed by Stephen Wozniak and sold by Wozniak in conjunction with Steve Jobs was sold, and became a leader in personal computing. Originally marketed to hobbyists only primarily as a fully assembled circuit board; purchasers had to add their own case and monitor in order to create a working computer.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American HistoryArtificial Heart, 1977: Robert Jarvik, M.D., Prototype.
This electrohydraulic artificial heart is a prototype for what became the Jarvik-7 Total Artificial Heart, which was first implanted into a human in December 1982 at the University of Utah Medical Center. The two sides of the device are connected with Velcro.
Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of American History
