New Companion Sewing Machine

Today sewing machines are a very common item. But in the 19^th, century, sewing machines were a new invention that began to appear in both factories and homes. Today we will be taking a look back at the history of sewing machines, like the one found on the 2^nd floor of the Farm House Museum.

The art of sewing is much older than the 19^th century. It is believed that when humans started living in colder environments in Central Asia 40,000 years ago, they would have needed animal skins to keep them warm. Archeological evidence shows they would have used sharp bones to poke holes in the skins so they could stick cords through. By around 9000 BC people began spinning wool and linen to make cloths as well as eventually using bronze needles. These early needles would have bent easily and made it hard to sew clothes together. Usually tight cloths would only be sewn in cold places. As more people wore different styles of clothes, having a job as a seamstress became more popular. Needles were eventually improved in the 14^th century through the use of iron and it was only a century later that the first eyed needles appeared.

The history of the sewing machine is a bit more recent. Before the invention of the sewing machine, all sewing was done by hand and mostly by women. Many factories would have hundreds of women sewing individually all day. It was only a matter of time till a sewing machine would be invented. Many don’t completely agree on who actually invented the first sewing machine. The first mention of a sewing device was in 1755; a German immigrant, Charles Weisenthal, took out a patent in London for a needle to be used for mechanical sewing, however there was no machine to go with it. It was in 1790 that Thomas Saint patented his own sewing machine, but it was lost until 1873. When it was discovered in the patent office, officials tried recreating his chain stitch machine but it required a number of modifications to get it working. This isn’t to say that Saint was wrong about his machine, just that he had needed more time to work on it.

While Saint’s machine sat in the patent office, Baltasar Krems invented a machine that would sew the seams of caps in 1810. Krems’ machine was pedal operated with a continuous circular chain stitch. While an early machine, he never patented it. Five years later Josef Madersperger tried patenting one in Austria but the machine didn’t work right. In 1818, Adam Doge and John Knowles created a sewing machine that could actually stitch. The catch was that it could only sew a short length before having to be reset, which took forever. It wasn’t until 1830 that the first working sewing machine was invented by Barthelemy Thimonnier in France. His machine was made entirely out of wood and used a barbed needle to create a chain stitch. He was able to convince the government of its usefulness and gained a contract to sew uniforms for the French army. His factory had 80 machines, but Parisian tailors got mad. They were angry that the machine took their jobs away so they attacked his workshop and burned all the machines causing Barthelemy to flee to England. He tried selling it there but ultimately ended up poor.

For a time a number of different sewing machines and devices were created in both Europe and America. But in 1846 an American rural farmer, Elias Howe, invented a sewing machine that used thread from two different sources along with a needle that had an eye at the point. He was unsuccessful in selling it, so he traveled to London, where he was equally unsuccessful. Little did he know that back in America, the sewing machine finally started catching on with dozens of sewing factories popping up. One such entrepreneur was Isaac Singer who patented the first commercially efficient one in 1851. Known as the Singer Machine, it was mass-produced around the U.S. as it was able to sew much quicker. The needle moved up and down and was powered by a foot pedal instead of hand cranked. This allowed the operator to use both hands. This mass production caused trouble when Elias Howe returned from England, only to find all these companies with sewing machines, some using his patient! He began to sue every company over patent infringement making a lot of money off of it. It was only a matter of time before he sued the successful tycoon Isaac Singer in 1854. The case was very over blown and contributed to the confusion about who really invented the sewing machine. Howe did win the case and got patent royalties. In the end though, he and Singer actually both died very rich men, yet many old sewing machines are still called Singer Machines.

The way a sewing machine works can be a bit confusing. When hand sewing, a needle must pass through the two pieces of fabric with a thread attached to the end. The needle then passes through the fabric and back out again. Using the machine is a bit different. On a sewing machine the needle only goes partway through the fabric. The eye where the thread goes through is at the sharp end of the needle. When the needle is punctured into the fabric, the thread goes with it. Below the table is another spool of thread, which spins around. This spool catches the other thread as it passes through the fabric and connects it to its own thread. Once the two threads are joined the needle pulls out of the fabric and the two threads are joined in the fabric. Using the pedal on the bottom of the machine the fabric and needle are pushed forward continuing the process again.     

The sewing machine in the Farm House Museum is located upstairs in the sewing room. This room actually used to be a bedroom for the house when it had more residents, but when it became a one family house for the Curtiss family, they didn’t need all the bedrooms. They converted this room into a sewing room for Dean Curtiss’s wife, Olive. The sewing machine in this room is called a New Companion. New Companion sewing machines were made by the New Home Sewing Company. After Singer began selling his sewing machine in 1851, they started to become very popular with a number of different companies. One such company was the New Home Sewing Machine Co. that began in 1877 in New York. New Home released a number of different models with names like Rotary and Ruby. Many of them actually look similar to the New Companion. One thing that was common for them was to have the large desk with drawers on both sides. This was so that when someone was sewing all they had to do was continually push the pedal, leaving their hands free to sew. The New Companion in the Farm House has all these adaptions. The New Home Co. stayed in business for a while but were bought by the Free Sewing Machine Co. in 1927 and eventually merged with the National Sewing Machine Company. Sewing machines were a revolutionary technology, which made industry go much faster and made life easier for women in the 19^th century. The New Companion stands as a testament to how technology improved many lives in the Farm House and in the world.