October 9, 2019 • 45 mins
Sewing seems like a pretty wholesome hobby, but the most famous sewing machine brand had a founder who was anything but. He was an inventor and successful, savvy businessman, but his true passion was acting, and er... women. Isaac Merritt Singer makes the bad boy CEOs of our time look pretty tame. In this episode of Bizography we dig into the personal story of Isaac Singer, AND we give him credit for furthering an invention that changed consumer behavior. HINT: It wasn't the sewing machine.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If we were playing trivia and I asked you to
name a sewing machine brand, you'd probably say Singer. And
if you don't so, you might not even be able
to think of another brand. So given that, you might
assume that a guy named Singer invented the sewing machine.
But you'd be wrong. This is Physiography, the show where
(00:28):
we dive into the strange but true stories of iconic companies.
Whether they're a current bright star, in the midst of
a massive dumpster fire, or settling into the dust heap
of history, they all have a past worth knowing. I'm
Dana Barrett. I'm a former tech executive and entrepreneur and
a TV and radio host, and over the course of
my career, I've interviewed thousands of business leaders and reported
(00:49):
on the bright beginnings and massive flame outs of the
brands we know and love. Some of their stories are
about hard work and perseverance, some are about finding opportunity
at the right time in history, and some are about
bad boys who just think they can do whatever they want.
Phisiography is a production of I Heart Radio and dB
(01:09):
Media and is co hosted as always by my producer,
Nick Bean. Hello, Dana, Okay, So what do you mean
by that? Because I know Singer wasn't the first two
in veneseting machine, and I know he was kind of
a player in his personal life. But what do you
mean by bad boys who just think they can do
whatever they want? You make it sound like there's more
(01:30):
than one. Okay, Well, no, Singer is the bad boy
in this episode of Phisiography, but his exploits in the
eighteen hundreds remind me a lot of some of the
other well known entrepreneurs from modern times. I think, you know,
like We Works co founder and chief executive Adam Newman,
who you know has been partying all over the place,
(01:50):
got caught with like marijuana in his plane, um, and
all of that has sort of been in the news lately.
Then there's Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, who we hear about
all the time, and he is constantly mouthing off about something.
He's going on camera, smoking pot, he's on you know,
investor calls, kind of telling off his own investors. And
(02:12):
then of course we all remember bad boy Travis Kalanik,
the CEO of Uber. Remember that a little bit where
he got caught on tape um just basically taking down
one of his drivers. What have I changed about black
on black? Yes, you did, did with twenty dollars. We
(02:35):
started with twenty dollars. You know how much he is
the mile Now you know what what? Some people don't
like to take responsibility to everything. Good luck, Yeah, bad
look there. So all these guys, though, were kicked out
of the top job, at least partially. So you're saying
(02:57):
Singer was kicked out, Well not exactly. I mean times
were different and he wasn't forced out of his company,
but his antics did actually force him to flee the
country at one point, So maybe that's even more dramatic.
Of course, all of the bad boy antics are only
part of the Singer story. Isaac Merritt Singer was an inventor,
(03:19):
but it wasn't his invention that turned Singer the company
into the iconic business that we're going to talk about.
It was so iconic at one time this business had
market share. It's there's a reason why when you say
sewing machine, people think Singer. Um, it wasn't though, because
of that invention. He wasn't the first. It was because
(03:40):
he was a force of personality like those other guys,
and because of two changes to the way that we
do business that he capitalized on better than anybody else,
one having to do with patents, and the other that
literally gave rise to the extreme consumerism we have today.
So we have a lot to get through. I assume
we shoud probably start at the beginning, though, Yeah, that
(04:01):
is always a good plan. So let's start with little
baby Isaac Merritt Singer. He was born in eighteen eleven
in Pittstown, New York, which is sort of upstate near Rochester,
and um, kind of had a relatively normal childhood I
think for that era. Then in eighteen one, when he
was ten years old, his parents got divorced and his
mother left his father, Adam, remarried. Ten year old Isaac
(04:25):
did not get along with his stepmother, so two years later,
in eighteen twenty three, he went to live with his
brother in Oswego, New York. His brother had a machine shop,
this of course as an older brother, and he starts
working there and lawns how to become a mechanic. He's
like apprenticing there, uh, and he's doing some other odd
jobs in Oswego and kind of just growing up, if
(04:48):
you will. Ultimately somewhere In the middle of all of this,
he got the acting bug and ran off to join
a traveling stage act called the Rochester Players in Sting. Yeah. Now,
I have to say, we did a lot of research
on the young years of Isaac Merritt Singer, and when
you're looking back into history, especially with somebody like this
(05:11):
who wasn't super well documented, it's kind of hard to
put the exact pieces together of when the important things happened.
And I don't want to get two mired down in
the details, but I think we could at least get
to sort of the main things. His marriage and the
fact that he sort of was going back and forth
between working in this sort of mechanic world and acting. Yeah,
(05:33):
two very very different fields of profession he was really into, right,
So I think we should go start with his marriage
because that might be simpler, Yeah, probably, or in his
case it might even be not simpler. We'll see. But
in eighteen thirty, when he was only nineteen. I say
that because in our era nineteen would be young to
get married. I don't think it really was then, but
(05:53):
he was nineteen years old in eighteen thirty when he
married fifteen year old Catherine Maria Haley and and uh.
They ended up ultimately having two kids, the first one William,
the second one Lilian. But he was like an actor
the way we sometimes think of them today, sort of
a celeb. He was a player in the modern sense
(06:16):
of the word. Yeah, he took advantage of the group piece.
I guess one would say one one would say that.
So he started having an affair pretty early on, like
after the first kid was born. He was already having
an affair because he had a kid with the woman
he was having an affair with before his second child
from his marriage was born. So he was playing around
from early days. It is worth noting also that he
(06:39):
was six ft four. It's a tall guy, especially back then, right,
So he was noteworthy. He had a presence, you know,
and he took out on the road um as an
actor and so in and around those years. And I
want to get into his love life in more detail,
because I said he was a bad boy, and most
of it was around his promiscuity, shall we call it.
(07:00):
So part of the story is that he was back
and forth between sort of mechanick ng and acting really
throughout the next almost twenty years. Throughout the eighteen thirties
and eighteen forties. But from a work perspective, probably the
most noteworthy early moment was in eighteen thirty nine when
he really established himself as an inventor. He was working
(07:24):
in Illinois at the time, and that's when he got
his first patent. He patented a rock drilling machine that
he made for the government and he got two thousand
bucks for it. Not too bad. Yeah, that was like
around fifty five thousand dollars in today's money, So that
was a lot. I mean, two thousand for us sounds
like that's a paycheck, you know what I mean, small one,
depending on who you are, But fifty five thousand, that's
(07:45):
that's a year's salary for most people. Yeah, that's not
a bad thing. So again, with this back and forth business,
it really seemed, and you pointed this out, Nick when
we were doing the research, that he was mechanick ng,
which by the way, I was a word I have
now made up to support his acting and philandering. Correct,
Like he wasn't. He didn't love being an inventor or
(08:06):
a mechanic. He just was doing that and then he'd
get enough money and he'd go back to the other lifestyle.
So that's exactly what he did. Uh. In eight nine,
he took that money that he got for the patent
and he founded his own acting troup. Now remember he
had originally been in the Rochester Players. There was a
short stint in another group called the Baltimore Players. Now
he forms his own troop called the Merit Players. That's
(08:27):
his middle name, Merit so um. And by the way,
when he was on the road with the Merit Players,
he went by the name Isaac Merritt, which is part
of the reason it makes his history a little hard
to track because he wasn't the same guy all the
way across exactly. So that's um. Through his acting career
is where he met this first woman that he had
an affair with, Mary Ann Sponslor, and he formed the
(08:50):
Merit Players with her. So they were already together by
the time the Merit Players were formed, and he had
a twenty five year long relationship with her, where his
first marriage was already kind of bling by then. Um,
but he wasn't free to marry her because he was
still married to the first one. And I think they
didn't get a divorce toal a lot later until eighteen sixty.
(09:10):
I think is when she finally filed for divorce against him. Yeah,
and I want to dig into the love life, and
I have to admit, Um, we break up the research
in different ways when we're doing these episodes, and you
Nick did more of the research on the love life.
So I'm gonna let you tell that story in a
little bit because that's probably the best part of this
whole episode. Um, this guy was really something. Um. In
(09:31):
any case, it is worth noting that even though um,
he didn't marry Marianne legally at that point, they did
have a common law marriage and they had ten kids together. Yeah. Um. Also,
while they were traveling and he was going under the
name Isaac Merritt, she was going under the name Mrs Merritt.
So this really is like one of those a family
(09:52):
in one city with one name and a family in
another city with another name. Oh and by the way,
we didn't even mention in the fact that when he
was younger, before he even married anybody, he was already
being promiscuous when he was out with the Rochester players. Ye.
So there's a lot of kids involved here, and there's
many kids that we don't know about because they were illegitimate.
(10:16):
That is the quintessential bad boy in my humble opinion. Alright,
I gotta ask, though, the merit players, the Rochester players,
the Baltimore players, and he was a player. Do you
think that that term Do you think the term player
came from acting? From actors being players? You know, I
always thought for the longest time it was a you know,
players play the field, right, Baseball, football, soccer play on
(10:39):
the field, right, So you're playing the field. But now
that we've done this research, I could totally see it
because most of the acting troops were this something players,
that's what they were called, actors players. I totally think
this is probably where that term originated from. I mean,
in fairness, we did not research the is it called
etymology of the word of the term player, like we
(10:59):
didn't urban dictionary are and try to figure out exactly
where that term originally came from. But it doesn't seem
like too impossible that it came from this, right, because,
like you said, there is kind of that aura about actors,
right that most of the time, and you can't tell
me that back then he was the only actor in
a troop that was doing this exactly. Yeah, Well, they
were traveling all over the country. Nobody was paying attention
(11:21):
media people in the eighteen right, there were no there
were no video cameras in everyone's pocket at the time. Um.
In any case, that basically, this going back and forth
between acting mechanick ng and marrying and having kids all
over the place was sort of how Isaac Merrittsinger spent
the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties. In eighteen forty nine,
(11:46):
after remember this is now ten years after that first patent,
which was eighteen thirty nine for that rock drilling machine,
he invents a new thing at this time, it's a
wood and metal carving machine, and he opens his own factory.
He's i think now decided he's a grown man on um,
he's going to have He's gonna get serious and have
a business. So he opens a factory to manufacture this
(12:07):
new wooden metal carving machine that he created. But the
factory was destroyed in an explosion. Now there's not a
lot of history about that story, but I bet there
was a story. Oh yeah, because that's a little convenient.
You never really hear anything more about the wooden metal
(12:27):
carving machine. We don't really know what it was. I'm
thinking maybe he opened the factory, it wasn't going so well.
Maybe he got some players to do something that wasn't
really above board. You know, I don't because the records
that we did find did say that that invention wasn't
doing awesome when he first started making it. Yeah, I
(12:47):
don't have proof of this. I'm just because he was
such a player just generally. I just wonder if, like
he was like, oh, maybe I don't really want to
do this. We'll have some guys go in at like
two am and put some extrare coals in the boiler, right, Yeah,
just wondering, alright, Anyway, eighty nine that same year, uh,
Singer meets a lawyer, a New York lawyer named Edward Clark,
(13:08):
and um, it's around that time also that he helps
another guy that he was doing some work for, Pomeroy,
sort of make a better sewing machine. So he didn't
invent a sewing machine. There were other people who had
sewing machines on the market. The main one really is
a guy named Elias how But this guy Pomeroy had
a sewing machine in his shop and Isaac Singer made
(13:29):
it better, and then he decided he should patent his
part of of the sewing machine and try to make
some money on that. That is how he and Edward
Clark started working together. Because of the factory burning down,
he didn't have a lot of money, so he gave
like most of the patent to the lawyer, three three
eighths of it or something. So that's kind of a lot,
(13:50):
not quite half, but still a lot for just being
the lawyer helping with the legal process. Yeah. I don't
think people do that so much anymore. Now you just
pay cash and you keep the pet um. In any case,
eighteen fifty is when his sewing machine really becomes a thing,
and some call it, you know, the world's first practical
(14:11):
sewing machine that was used in homes. So not the
first sewing machine, but the first one to really get
sort of practical and popular. Okay, it's eighteen fifty now, Okay,
So now he is sort of, you know, for real
as a grown man and he's got this invention. But
the problem is there are a lot of other people
(14:33):
that have patents on sewing machines. So how's he going
to handle that. We'll talk about it right after this.
So it's eighteen fifty and our can we call him
our hero. Okay, okay, now our hero Isaac Merritt Singer
(14:55):
has essentially air quotes invented a sell machine that you know,
operates at nine hundred stitches per minute. It takes the
time to make a shirt down from like fourteen minutes
to one minute. I mean, I could not make a
shirt in one minute with the best machine, but the
professional seamstress can do that. There you go. And in
(15:15):
those days, of course, people were making their clothes at home.
Fashion wasn't the way it is now. There was no
such thing as fast fashion back in those days. Uh.
In any case, in nineteen fifty that is when uh
Singer first has his company, I am Singer and Co.
And in eighteen fifty one, the patent he had applied
for comes through and it's issued again, and part of
(15:36):
it is owned by his attorney slash business partner, Edward Clark.
It's patent number eight to nine four, which I just
kind of love because the numbers are so huge now, yeah,
I think like seven or eight. It's it's absurd. Yeah,
And that was eight to nine four. That was the
first Singer brand sewing machine. It was August twelfth, eighteen
fifty one. Now I mentioned in the first segment that
(16:00):
there were other people that had patented sewing machines before Singer,
So how come he became so famous? Like why do
we not if I say name a sewing machine, you
don't go, oh the how? Yeah? I don't think anybody
even knows that that was ever a thing, right, I
mean a lie is how like maybe rings a vague
bell for somebody, but not really. Um, here's the thing.
(16:21):
The machine was good, it was practical, Maybe it was
slightly better than the others, it's unclear, but really what
happened was all of these guys started duking it out.
They were all fighting in through the early eighteen fifties.
They were all trying to sell their own sewing machines
into the marketplace, where, by the way, I remember, everybody
made their own clothes essentially, or maybe maybe if you
(16:42):
had real money, you could buy it at sort of
the dry goods store clothing, But more likely you bought
your material at the dry goods store, you brought it
home and you either sewed it by hand or you
got one of these fancy new sewing machines, and that's
how you got your clothes. So they're all trying to
sell their machines, and they're all accusing each other of
patent infringement and suing each other. And it's funny because
(17:06):
so many, so much of what happened in in Isaac
Singer's life feels like it could happen now. That's very true,
right with all the lawsuits of each other, of you
took this piece of my idea and that piece of
my idea. Yeah, even his personal life, Like I don't
think of people getting divorces in the eighteen hundreds, but
like his dad got a divorce in the early eighteen hundreds,
you know, and he didn't like his step mom. Like
(17:27):
that's right out of an after school special from the
nineteen eighties, you know. Um, In any case, they're all
duking it out, fighting over these patents. As there's a
bunch of different manufacturers, one called Grover and Baker, one
called Singer, we know him, one called Wheeler and Wilson.
How was in the middle of all of this. And
then there was this lawyer. His name was Orlando Potter.
(17:49):
He was a lawyer and he was president also of
the Grover and Baker company. And it was his sort
of brilliant idea that changed the game for Singer because
his idea was that rather than squandering all the profits
on all these lawsuits back and forth, that they should
pool their patents. Okay, so basically, we'll all take our
(18:12):
ideas and we'll put them in a big pot and
we'll take our respective pieces of the pie. Essentially. Yes,
it was really the first ever patent pool. And the
idea was because they had all sort of patented different
parts of the machine or different parts of the process,
they would put them all together in a pool. They
would license their idea, essentially, their pooled idea to whoever
(18:32):
wanted to buy it, and they would all share in
the profits. So that's what they did. So they stopped
screwing around with the courts and they got to make
in sewing machines. Uh. Some of them took their money
and ran, but Singer decided to stick with it and
make these machines. And he then took his sort of
tenacity and started selling sewing machines like crazy, yeah, to
(18:56):
everybody and anybody, right, like one of the early companies
in in era to go international. And I think this
is interesting too. It's the very first one, right because
how many times have we had good ideas. Not you
and I, but anyone had a good idea about something
based off of an already existing invention. That's essentially what
this was, right, is you we're going to make the
needle work differently, or the mechanism inside that works the needle,
(19:18):
or the way the needles made that was just better
and better and better upon the same machine. But you're
right they were spending at that point in time, probably thousands,
which is a lot of money in court, just suing
the heck out of each other. They never got to
business solved that problem, right. And I think there's another
interesting point that you bring up there, which is nowadays,
if you were working inventing something, and one of the
(19:41):
things you would probably do pretty early on is higher
patent attorney to go look and see if there were
other patents already on this, and if there were, you'd
probably give up and move on. That's a good point.
But these guys were kind of into like ask for
forgiveness not permission sort of mode. Right, It's true. I
mean I think, really, let's be honest, that's how Isaac
(20:01):
Merritt Singer lived his entire life. Let's just do what
we want to do and see if we can get
away with it. Right? Who worked out for him? Right?
So the patent pool really made it possible for him
to do what he wanted to do without all the
litigation that might have ensued otherwise. And that was an
important part of the Singer Sewing Machine company story. But
(20:22):
the bigger piece of Singers success had to do with
a completely different business tactic, one that I think has
changed the game for American consumerism and maybe world consumerism
ever since. We'll talk about it right after this. So
(20:44):
we were talking about the idea of the patent pool,
this concept of grouping a bunch of patents together, and
how the decision to do that, first of all, wasn't
Singer's idea, but one of the attorneys for the other company,
one of the other companies that thought of it, but
also in that same mode of asking for forgiveness instead
of permission. While that whole thing was going on during
(21:07):
the eighteen fifties, business continued for all of these companies. So,
for example, in eighteen fifty six, when the patent pool
actually got started, they were well into making these machines
and getting all kinds of accolades for them. The year
before the patent pool even became a thing. In eighteen
fifty five, Singer was awarded the first prize at the
(21:27):
World's Fair in Paris, France, So they were already getting
all kinds of accolades. And it was that year eighteen
fifty five again before the patent pool really became a thing,
that Singer became the largest selling brand of sewing machines internationally.
So they weren't waiting for the results of all of
these lawsuits. They were just plowing ahead, kind of along
(21:50):
the lines of some of our other bad boys. We
talked about Elon Musk, and we talked about Adam Newman
from We Work, and these are kind of the same
kind of guys who just moved forward and do things
the way they want to do them, and they work
it out in the courts later. I mean, Uber certainly
was famous for that. I mean Uber went international and
despite whatever laws were in their way. Yeah, they did
(22:12):
some underhanded things in certain cities. They broke regulations, They
just did things without asking permission. They just went in
and did their thing and waited for the cities, the countries,
the localities, whomever to sue them. And then they brought
the lawyers in and they dealt with it. So this
is sort of the same story for Singer, right. So
eighteen fifty five they win this huge award at the
(22:34):
World's Fair, they become the largest selling brand of sewing machines.
But again, even all of that didn't necessarily cement them
in history. It was really an idea had by again
not Singer, but his business partner and lawyer Edward Clark,
who in eighteen fifty six, that same year that the
patent pool was okayed, came up with an idea that,
(22:56):
in my mind, changed consumerism. It was the first ever
American installment purchase plan. So this was before the days
of credit cards. It was really it's not that you
couldn't buy things on credit before this. You know, in
small towns where everybody knew each other, you could go
into the local store and if they knew you, they
(23:17):
would put it on your tab right and you would
pay it later. So that was essentially early buying on
credit um And there were installment plans in other parts
of the world that had sort of bubbled up but
never became as huge and popular as what Singer created
with the installment plan to buy a sewing machine. So
the idea was that sewing machines were not cheap and
(23:40):
everybody wanted one, but the average you know, eighteen fifties
eighteen sixties housewife couldn't afford it. So they come up
with this installment plan, you know, for easy payments. We
all know that, right, And when you think about what
that developed into over time with credit cards and how
(24:02):
we now so many Americans, myself included, live beyond our
means by way of credit and by way of installment
plans essentially, except now we just generally do it in
a more centralized way, right through a single company instead
of through each individual person you get stuff from. Yeah,
although I think a lot of people probably have something,
(24:23):
for example, like a Best Buy credit card, the store
cards and right, and so you're buying all maybe not
just a single machine, but all of your machines on
on an installment plan essentially, especially when they give you
that zero percent interest for however many months that is
the equivalent of an installment plan, is yeah. Um. And
it also of course reminds me very much of the
(24:43):
modern infomercials, where you still are literally buying things with
the three easy payments or the four easy payments. I mean,
there's everybody doing that to this day, from like Chuck
Norris and the Total Gym to Proactive to uh I
think we pulled one right now. The Extraordinary slim Cycle
is just six payments of thirty. But wait, there's more.
(25:06):
Will also include ten free, fun downloadable videos. I am
so confident that you will love slim Cycle as much
as I do that I'm offering a one dent satisfaction guarantee.
If you don't think this is the most comfortable and
effective bike you've ever used, just send it back, no
questions asked. I mean, I don't think any of us
(25:27):
feels like those kinds of infomercials are new per se,
but they obviously still work. And Singer was doing this
all the way back in the eighteen fifties. Now listen,
I wish there was audio from commercialists from back in
the eighteen fifties, but uh no. However, they were doing
it still a hundred years after that in the nineteen fifties,
(25:47):
and we did pull a Singer commercial from that era.
Take a lesson. Remember the Singer Economy model in this
beautiful walnut cabinet is only a hundred and forty with
a down payment of only four and with either model
you'll receive the famous Singer Sewing course absolutely free. So
trying one of these singers in your home soon, there's
(26:09):
no charge, no obligation of any kind. Just phone or
stop in at your Singer Sewing Center tomorrow and ask
for your free home trial. So how do you take
your expensive invention in the eighteen fifties and make it
accessible to everybody with four easy payments? That's how you
do it. And just wait, there's more, right exactly, they
(26:33):
would have things they tossed in for folks who incentivize
them to come out and buy. And it's so crazy
to think that all of this started with the sewing machine.
Yeah right, yeah, And listen, in fairness to Singer and
the company, they were still patenting new ideas for the
sewing machine. Once he got focused around this invention and
(26:55):
this machine, he clearly was a smart guy, just like
some of these other men we were talking about in
modern times. These are brilliant men, they're also just kind
of wild men, and he was sort of the same way.
He had absolutely had an inventor's mind. He introduced the
first lightweight domestic sewing machine called the Grasshopper and trademark
that in eighteen fifty eight. Um, he was, you know,
(27:17):
patenting more and more pieces. I think, did you say
they did the first foot pedal? Right, Yeah, Singer was
the company that invented the foot pedal part of the
sewing machine that I think so many of us remember,
you know, grandma pedaling as she sewed the clothes. Yeah,
absolutely so. Also in eighteen sixty, Isaac Singer had consolidated
enough patents in the field to allow him to really
(27:37):
get into mass production. So by eighteen sixty later that year,
his company became the largest manufacturer of sewing machines in
the world. Five years later, in eighteen sixty five, they
renamed the company to the Singer Manufacturing Company, and that
same year they deliver the quote new Family sewing machine.
That was the title of that one, or the name
(27:58):
brand of that one, the New Fly sewing Machine. Keep
in mind, this is like Civil War era. Yeah, it's
incredible to think, right, because every time I'm reading the story,
it feels like it should have been something that was
happening in the nineteen fifties, not the eighteen fifties, right,
because they were they were machines, but they weren't like
you know, they weren't like what we think of today,
(28:19):
made of plastic and plugged in and right like they
were you pedaled and you you know right, I mean,
it was a whole different thing. It really was absolutely
old school machinery. Yes, absolutely, Um. In any case, the
Civil War ended in was that, and you know, the
business kept going and as I mentioned, they were already international,
(28:41):
but by this point they had a demand for sewing
machines in the UK that was now so high that
they were ready to open a factory there in the UK.
So they opened a factory in Glasgow. Glasgow the gift
to say it with a British accent or doesn't count. Um,
and Singer I believe did some traveling back and forth. Correct, Yeah,
(29:03):
he did a little bit of back and forth traveling.
And some of that comes back to his love life,
which I think we I want to sort of save
his love life almost to the end of the episode
because it's such a story. Oh yes, this is a
total made for TV movie. Yes, and we do have
(29:24):
one more sort of important business piece to the puzzle here,
and that is the trademark. So the Singer trademark was
a red s girl trademark. That's what it was sort
of known as. It debuted in eighteen seventy. It was
produced in multiple languages and became one of the most
(29:45):
recognized trademarks in the world. Um, it was not the
first trademark, but it was the same year as the
first trademark, so it was one of the earliest trademarks.
The first one was actually that same year, eight teen
seventy by a company called Averael Paints. They had the
first U S registered trademark. Uh. Interesting to note that
(30:08):
a lot of the other sort of trademark history is
in and around beer, which is not surprising. That's one
of the oldest industries in the world, right, is alcohol
fermentation stuff like that. Yeah, so the first official like
you know, beer trademark in the UK was five years
after the Averael Paints in the Singer trademarks was eighteen
seventy five and it was the bass beer the red
(30:29):
triangle logo that you could probably still picture. That was
the first registered trademark in the UK. Yeah, but there's
a little bit of a like way before that story.
Oh you think that was early, but way before that
in the thirteen hundreds. There are some unofficial claims to
the earliest trademarks. So Low and Brow beer claims to
(30:50):
have the oldest continually used trademark in the world, saying
that they started using there as in three and then
still Artois, a beer that a lot of people know
it claims continuous use of its trademark from before that,
even from thirteen sixty six. That is wow, that's incredible.
(31:10):
So they weren't registered in the modern systems, but they
were used and protected essentially since the dreds. That's crazy. Yeah,
the trademarking is goes that far back, I know. But
of course again, Singer in terms of US trademarks was
one of the earliest ones in that first year of
registered trademarks with him. Yeah. Absolutely, So in any case,
(31:35):
the business is growing, he's got patents, he's got trademarks,
he's got wives, he's got kids. It's the whole thing. Um.
I have to say. He never did get kicked out
of the company. He died a millionaire with fourteen million
dollars at the time in so you know, he was
in his sixties. It wasn't an old demand, but relatively speaking,
(31:57):
by the time period he you know, he was older. Uh,
and he had a lot of stress because he had
a lot of women and a lot of kids. Um,
but he had fourteen million to his name when he died,
and that had to get divided up. Well, which could
you know, fourteen millions still a lot to divide up today,
but mind you, in eighteen seventy five dollars, it's almost
(32:18):
three hundred and thirty million dollars, so quite a fortune. Yeah.
So if you think of like the richest sort of playboy,
you know, who gets away with bad boy behavior, think
of this guy, because that kind of money hundreds of
millions of dollars equivalent in that era. Yeah, and he
had just enough women and kids to uh really, as
(32:40):
you said, make it made for a movie. Yeah. All right,
So we have to get to you know, his life
and his love life next. But I guess we should
wrap the business story by saying, after his death, the
company went on and continued to uh innovate and grow,
and ultimately, you know, as we know, fashion became something
(33:05):
done by you know, always still to this day, done
by machine, of course, but mostly in factories and much
less and less over the years at homes, at home
sewing became much more of a hobby and less of
a necessity. But Singer still remains to this day one
of the biggest sewing machine brands out there. Yeah, and
they're still innovating new stuff using computers and crazy technology
(33:26):
all the way up to today. Yeah, there's an app
for that. There's literally a Singer app. I don't know
why you would need one because I don't sell, but
it exists. So yeah, I mean there's a whole lot
of you know, sort of global history as they you know,
I mentioned that Singer had market share at one point
that was all the way back. They were crushing it
(33:47):
so that that that would qualify as a monopoly rope.
And by the way, I should also mention before we
get to the love life, that there was some of
the I have a big personality and I need my
name on everything about the Singer brand. Also about history.
They had some famous buildings over time, one in Manhattan
that was forty seven stories tall. Now this is long
after Singer is gone, but uh, they had this tallest
(34:10):
ever building in the world at the time, which was
forty seven stories. It was, but they lost their title
for tallest building one year later. That was that period
of time though, right when everyone was trying to out
inch the other exactly. Everybody's one one story taller, want
two stories taller? Right? Um. That said, the building did
hold a really interesting record of being one of the
(34:31):
tallest buildings, I think the tallest building ever to be
purposely demolished. Oh wow, right, some stories is a very
tall building that haven't you know, to take down? They
essentially took it down to put something bigger in its place. Um,
And it held that title until eleven. And of course
we know that the Twin towers didn't come down like
purposefully because of being demolished. So so the Singer building
(34:55):
is still the biggest to purposely be taken down. That's incredible. Yeah, crazy, uh.
In any case, he was clearly a success despite his
playboy craziness, which we have to end the story with
and which we will do right after this. So Singer
(35:18):
obviously a hugely successful man, you know, died with fourteen
million dollars to his name, which we said was how
many hundreds of millions? A right, and a company that
continues to this day. And while it is certainly less
of a household name. Now, that's really because the industry changed.
There's a lot of fascinating pieces to the story. For example,
(35:38):
they never really branched out far beyond the sewing machine, right.
I mean, they did occasionally acquire other companies along the way,
long after Singer had died, that did other things, but
the Singer company itself was always sewing machines. And by
the way, it of course over the years has been
bought and sold and all of those things. But at
the end of the day, the personality behind the brand
(36:00):
is such a story that we had to save it
for last because this goes beyond. A guy got married
and oh yeah, he also had an affair. This goes
way beyond, So like, take me all the way back
neck to like when this all starts. Okay, So he
married his first wife, wife Katherine, right in eighteen thirty
He was nineteen, she was fifteen, and they had their
first child in eighteen thirty four. Okay, so as we know,
(36:25):
there's obviously no definite records, but he was already dishonest.
He was getting bound to that right when they were
together and right about the time they had their first child.
So he's married to Katherine, they have their first child,
he is off with a woman that we said named
mary Ann Sponslor. He found her during his first tirade
through the Acting Troops and everything else like that. Well,
(36:47):
she has their first child in eighteen thirty seven, just
three years after his first child from his first wife
is born. Okay, long story short, he ends up leaving
his first wife after their second child is born to
basically live with mary Anne full time. Right, He's he's
decided that the mistresses be going, is going to become
(37:10):
the maid. He's going to go off and live with
his second family, Katherine, and they have ten kids together,
mary Anne, Yes, Katherine has to mary Anne and Isaac
have ten children together. Now remind you this, and now
we're up to twelve. This is not mentioning the kids
that we don't know about, because he had many illegitimate
(37:31):
children during his acting troop days. He was like going
out every night. Oh yeah, big time. So so he's
with Maryanne and they, like you said before, have a
very long twenty five year relationship. He's she's alongside him
when the when the Singer Corporation is blowing up and
starting to become extremely successful. They're doing so well that
(37:52):
Singer himself decides, hey, I'm going to buy a mansion
on Fifth Avenue, right, Oh yeah. So he moves Mary
Anne and the ten I think eight at the time
children into this mansion on Fifth Avenue and things are
going okay until mary Anne one day, while walking down
Fifth Avenue, spots Isaac in a carriage alongside one Mary McGonagall.
(38:15):
Now this woman isn't was an employee of Isaac's that
Mary Anne had some suspicions about. Obviously, she knows her
husband is not the most faithful man around, and he's
been spending too much time with this Mary McGonagall. Well,
come to find out she was right because when she
saw him, Mary was pregnant with Isaac's child, hold on,
(38:35):
after Isaac had already had an affair with Mary's sister.
So okay, so this he ends up. Mary Anne says,
get out, I'm kicking you out. I'm not taking this.
So he ends up getting with Mary McGonagall and they
together have five children who use a different name completely
they used the last name Matthews. Hold So now at
(38:57):
my count, we are up to sev kids. We're up
to seventeen kids with three wives or women want. Mary
Anne was never a wife, but like you said, common
law marriage. So she has five children and and come
to find out in eighteen sixty Katherine comes back into
the picture, his first wife, and she goes to have
a divorce, get a divorce from him, but comes to
(39:20):
find out that he divorced her first what he filed
for divorce a year earlier, claiming that she had an
adulterous relationship with a man named Stephen Kent Black much Yeah, yeah,
very very much. So, so she goes, fine, she signs
on the dotted line that they have an official divorce.
(39:42):
The side track to this that part of the story
is that Isaac's oldest child, William, his first son with Katherine,
ends up speaking up against his dad in court during
the divorce proceedings, which causes Isaac to completely remove him
from the will. So his oldest son got not a
penny of that three hundred and some odd million dollar
fortune because he called that out for being dad. Yeah right, exactly.
(40:08):
So so now he's got seventeen hold on now with
Mary McGonagall. But right, but wait, there's more, because all
of this finish is right about eighteen sixty two, because
he decides I can't do it anymore. Mary Anne is
breathing down my neck. Catherine's looking for a divorce, so
he grabs Mary mcdonagall and they run away to London.
(40:30):
In eighteen sixty two, he dies in London. He never
comes back to the US because of his reputation. Well,
come to find out there was another family he had
that nobody knew about, and it was another what is
this his fourth family at this point, with a Mary
Eastwood Walters. Now I don't know, maybe Mary was just
a very common name back then, but three of his
(40:50):
wives were named Mary. Well, if you think about it, yeah,
if you think about it, though, it made some kind
of sense because he didn't have to worry about calling
out the wrong name. Oh my god, there you go.
See we said he was a smart guy. Maybe he
looked specifically for Mary's or Mary Anne's rights. Oh my goodness.
So apparently his fourth family with this Mary Eastwood Walters
happened after Mary McGonagall affair started, but before he left
(41:15):
to London, because she was a machine worker in his
factory in New York and they also had a child together,
only one child. This was just like a fling, right,
and that was the end of it. Basically by about
eighteen seventy, come to find out he has eight teen children,
eighteen children that he claims eighteen children. But it's not
(41:40):
over yet. But wait, there is even more. With four
easy installments, you can have five easy installments of wives,
you can end up with three dozen children. Because he
finally runs away to London, he's living there for a
little while and he gets bored with Mary McGonagall, and
like a year later he goes and moves to Paris
(42:01):
to pick up a woman that he had spent some
time with back in the day and brought her back
to London and wed her. Her name Isabella Eugenie Boyer.
He's about fifty, she's about nineteen. She was. It's a rumor,
but they said she was the model for the Statue
of Liberty. So that's interesting, right. Well, she gave him
(42:23):
six more children before it was all said and done,
so he literally had tally had what eighteen plus six
twenty two or twenty four children by the time of
his death. Twenty four children, mind you, that he claimed
as his. There are many more out there who will
never know. I mean, I didn't think I would ever
(42:45):
be commenting on this kind of thing, in this podcast.
But he had some good swimmers. Yeah he did. That
is one way to phrase that. Yeah, this man was.
And that's part of the thing too, is some of
the business struggles late into the Singer Corps ration stem
from his business partners going Isaac, dude, keep it in
your pants, right, we can sew you some new pants
(43:06):
that don't have like a button fly. We'll just sew
them right up. And and it's causing a lot of
people that in the business world to not want to
do business with Singer. It starts to get shaky there
towards the end because of his reputation, because he couldn't
keep it. He had to run literally and you kind
of glossed over this, but his reputation was so bad
in the midst of all this, that's why he went
(43:26):
to the UK like he was. It wasn't just that
he was tired of all the women. He was like, Okay,
I'm starting to look bad here. I gotta go somewhere
out precisely, and then the Glasgow operation had started up previously,
and he said, oh, I went to London to be
at the new operation. Now he left because everyone hated him, right, yeah, look,
I don't know exactly if we can, you know, credit
(43:47):
his playboy behavior with his success or I don't know
what the correlation is, but I think if we have
to pull any moral of the story here for Singer
and looking at some of the comparisons we made to
some of the bad boys of modern business, I think
the correlation is just that there is a separation of
business and bad behavior when it comes to personal behavior
(44:09):
that was okay then and it's kind of still okay
now to some extent that there is a certain tolerance
in the business world for bad behavior as long as
you're performing well from a business perspective. So I guess
the moral of the story is, if you kind of
want to be a bad boy, but you have some
good ideas, you do you? I think You're okay? You
(44:31):
do you? Yeah? It worked out for Isaac Merritt Singer
pretty well. It sure did. That is our show for today.
It's all sewn up. We'll see you next time. Zography
is a production of I Heart Radio and dB Media.
I'm your host Dana Barrett, My co host is Nick Bean,
our producer is Tory Harrison, and our executive producer is
(44:54):
Jonathan Strickland. Have questions I want to give us feedback
or have a company you'd like us to cover. Email
us at info at physiography dot Show, or contact us
on social. I'm at the Danta Barrett on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram, or just search for me on LinkedIn. Thanks
for your support.
If we were playing trivia and I asked you to
name a sewing machine brand, you'd probably say Singer. And
if you don't so, you might not even be able
to think of another brand. So given that, you might
assume that a guy named Singer invented the sewing machine.
But you'd be wrong. This is Physiography, the show where
(00:28):
we dive into the strange but true stories of iconic companies.
Whether they're a current bright star, in the midst of
a massive dumpster fire, or settling into the dust heap
of history, they all have a past worth knowing. I'm
Dana Barrett. I'm a former tech executive and entrepreneur and
a TV and radio host, and over the course of
my career, I've interviewed thousands of business leaders and reported
(00:49):
on the bright beginnings and massive flame outs of the
brands we know and love. Some of their stories are
about hard work and perseverance, some are about finding opportunity
at the right time in history, and some are about
bad boys who just think they can do whatever they want.
Phisiography is a production of I Heart Radio and dB
(01:09):
Media and is co hosted as always by my producer,
Nick Bean. Hello, Dana, Okay, So what do you mean
by that? Because I know Singer wasn't the first two
in veneseting machine, and I know he was kind of
a player in his personal life. But what do you
mean by bad boys who just think they can do
whatever they want? You make it sound like there's more
(01:30):
than one. Okay, Well, no, Singer is the bad boy
in this episode of Phisiography, but his exploits in the
eighteen hundreds remind me a lot of some of the
other well known entrepreneurs from modern times. I think, you know,
like We Works co founder and chief executive Adam Newman,
who you know has been partying all over the place,
(01:50):
got caught with like marijuana in his plane, um, and
all of that has sort of been in the news lately.
Then there's Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, who we hear about
all the time, and he is constantly mouthing off about something.
He's going on camera, smoking pot, he's on you know,
investor calls, kind of telling off his own investors. And
(02:12):
then of course we all remember bad boy Travis Kalanik,
the CEO of Uber. Remember that a little bit where
he got caught on tape um just basically taking down
one of his drivers. What have I changed about black
on black? Yes, you did, did with twenty dollars. We
(02:35):
started with twenty dollars. You know how much he is
the mile Now you know what what? Some people don't
like to take responsibility to everything. Good luck, Yeah, bad
look there. So all these guys, though, were kicked out
of the top job, at least partially. So you're saying
(02:57):
Singer was kicked out, Well not exactly. I mean times
were different and he wasn't forced out of his company,
but his antics did actually force him to flee the
country at one point, So maybe that's even more dramatic.
Of course, all of the bad boy antics are only
part of the Singer story. Isaac Merritt Singer was an inventor,
(03:19):
but it wasn't his invention that turned Singer the company
into the iconic business that we're going to talk about.
It was so iconic at one time this business had
market share. It's there's a reason why when you say
sewing machine, people think Singer. Um, it wasn't though, because
of that invention. He wasn't the first. It was because
(03:40):
he was a force of personality like those other guys,
and because of two changes to the way that we
do business that he capitalized on better than anybody else,
one having to do with patents, and the other that
literally gave rise to the extreme consumerism we have today.
So we have a lot to get through. I assume
we shoud probably start at the beginning, though, Yeah, that
(04:01):
is always a good plan. So let's start with little
baby Isaac Merritt Singer. He was born in eighteen eleven
in Pittstown, New York, which is sort of upstate near Rochester,
and um, kind of had a relatively normal childhood I
think for that era. Then in eighteen one, when he
was ten years old, his parents got divorced and his
mother left his father, Adam, remarried. Ten year old Isaac
(04:25):
did not get along with his stepmother, so two years later,
in eighteen twenty three, he went to live with his
brother in Oswego, New York. His brother had a machine shop,
this of course as an older brother, and he starts
working there and lawns how to become a mechanic. He's
like apprenticing there, uh, and he's doing some other odd
jobs in Oswego and kind of just growing up, if
(04:48):
you will. Ultimately somewhere In the middle of all of this,
he got the acting bug and ran off to join
a traveling stage act called the Rochester Players in Sting. Yeah. Now,
I have to say, we did a lot of research
on the young years of Isaac Merritt Singer, and when
you're looking back into history, especially with somebody like this
(05:11):
who wasn't super well documented, it's kind of hard to
put the exact pieces together of when the important things happened.
And I don't want to get two mired down in
the details, but I think we could at least get
to sort of the main things. His marriage and the
fact that he sort of was going back and forth
between working in this sort of mechanic world and acting. Yeah,
(05:33):
two very very different fields of profession he was really into, right,
So I think we should go start with his marriage
because that might be simpler, Yeah, probably, or in his
case it might even be not simpler. We'll see. But
in eighteen thirty, when he was only nineteen. I say
that because in our era nineteen would be young to
get married. I don't think it really was then, but
(05:53):
he was nineteen years old in eighteen thirty when he
married fifteen year old Catherine Maria Haley and and uh.
They ended up ultimately having two kids, the first one William,
the second one Lilian. But he was like an actor
the way we sometimes think of them today, sort of
a celeb. He was a player in the modern sense
(06:16):
of the word. Yeah, he took advantage of the group piece.
I guess one would say one one would say that.
So he started having an affair pretty early on, like
after the first kid was born. He was already having
an affair because he had a kid with the woman
he was having an affair with before his second child
from his marriage was born. So he was playing around
from early days. It is worth noting also that he
(06:39):
was six ft four. It's a tall guy, especially back then, right,
So he was noteworthy. He had a presence, you know,
and he took out on the road um as an
actor and so in and around those years. And I
want to get into his love life in more detail,
because I said he was a bad boy, and most
of it was around his promiscuity, shall we call it.
(07:00):
So part of the story is that he was back
and forth between sort of mechanick ng and acting really
throughout the next almost twenty years. Throughout the eighteen thirties
and eighteen forties. But from a work perspective, probably the
most noteworthy early moment was in eighteen thirty nine when
he really established himself as an inventor. He was working
(07:24):
in Illinois at the time, and that's when he got
his first patent. He patented a rock drilling machine that
he made for the government and he got two thousand
bucks for it. Not too bad. Yeah, that was like
around fifty five thousand dollars in today's money, So that
was a lot. I mean, two thousand for us sounds
like that's a paycheck, you know what I mean, small one,
depending on who you are, But fifty five thousand, that's
(07:45):
that's a year's salary for most people. Yeah, that's not
a bad thing. So again, with this back and forth business,
it really seemed, and you pointed this out, Nick when
we were doing the research, that he was mechanick ng,
which by the way, I was a word I have
now made up to support his acting and philandering. Correct,
Like he wasn't. He didn't love being an inventor or
(08:06):
a mechanic. He just was doing that and then he'd
get enough money and he'd go back to the other lifestyle.
So that's exactly what he did. Uh. In eight nine,
he took that money that he got for the patent
and he founded his own acting troup. Now remember he
had originally been in the Rochester Players. There was a
short stint in another group called the Baltimore Players. Now
he forms his own troop called the Merit Players. That's
(08:27):
his middle name, Merit so um. And by the way,
when he was on the road with the Merit Players,
he went by the name Isaac Merritt, which is part
of the reason it makes his history a little hard
to track because he wasn't the same guy all the
way across exactly. So that's um. Through his acting career
is where he met this first woman that he had
an affair with, Mary Ann Sponslor, and he formed the
(08:50):
Merit Players with her. So they were already together by
the time the Merit Players were formed, and he had
a twenty five year long relationship with her, where his
first marriage was already kind of bling by then. Um,
but he wasn't free to marry her because he was
still married to the first one. And I think they
didn't get a divorce toal a lot later until eighteen sixty.
(09:10):
I think is when she finally filed for divorce against him. Yeah,
and I want to dig into the love life, and
I have to admit, Um, we break up the research
in different ways when we're doing these episodes, and you
Nick did more of the research on the love life.
So I'm gonna let you tell that story in a
little bit because that's probably the best part of this
whole episode. Um, this guy was really something. Um. In
(09:31):
any case, it is worth noting that even though um,
he didn't marry Marianne legally at that point, they did
have a common law marriage and they had ten kids together. Yeah. Um. Also,
while they were traveling and he was going under the
name Isaac Merritt, she was going under the name Mrs Merritt.
So this really is like one of those a family
(09:52):
in one city with one name and a family in
another city with another name. Oh and by the way,
we didn't even mention in the fact that when he
was younger, before he even married anybody, he was already
being promiscuous when he was out with the Rochester players. Ye.
So there's a lot of kids involved here, and there's
many kids that we don't know about because they were illegitimate.
(10:16):
That is the quintessential bad boy in my humble opinion. Alright,
I gotta ask, though, the merit players, the Rochester players,
the Baltimore players, and he was a player. Do you
think that that term Do you think the term player
came from acting? From actors being players? You know, I
always thought for the longest time it was a you know,
players play the field, right, Baseball, football, soccer play on
(10:39):
the field, right, So you're playing the field. But now
that we've done this research, I could totally see it
because most of the acting troops were this something players,
that's what they were called, actors players. I totally think
this is probably where that term originated from. I mean,
in fairness, we did not research the is it called
etymology of the word of the term player, like we
(10:59):
didn't urban dictionary are and try to figure out exactly
where that term originally came from. But it doesn't seem
like too impossible that it came from this, right, because,
like you said, there is kind of that aura about actors,
right that most of the time, and you can't tell
me that back then he was the only actor in
a troop that was doing this exactly. Yeah, Well, they
were traveling all over the country. Nobody was paying attention
(11:21):
media people in the eighteen right, there were no there
were no video cameras in everyone's pocket at the time. Um.
In any case, that basically, this going back and forth
between acting mechanick ng and marrying and having kids all
over the place was sort of how Isaac Merrittsinger spent
the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties. In eighteen forty nine,
(11:46):
after remember this is now ten years after that first patent,
which was eighteen thirty nine for that rock drilling machine,
he invents a new thing at this time, it's a
wood and metal carving machine, and he opens his own factory.
He's i think now decided he's a grown man on um,
he's going to have He's gonna get serious and have
a business. So he opens a factory to manufacture this
(12:07):
new wooden metal carving machine that he created. But the
factory was destroyed in an explosion. Now there's not a
lot of history about that story, but I bet there
was a story. Oh yeah, because that's a little convenient.
You never really hear anything more about the wooden metal
(12:27):
carving machine. We don't really know what it was. I'm
thinking maybe he opened the factory, it wasn't going so well.
Maybe he got some players to do something that wasn't
really above board. You know, I don't because the records
that we did find did say that that invention wasn't
doing awesome when he first started making it. Yeah, I
(12:47):
don't have proof of this. I'm just because he was
such a player just generally. I just wonder if, like
he was like, oh, maybe I don't really want to
do this. We'll have some guys go in at like
two am and put some extrare coals in the boiler, right, Yeah,
just wondering, alright, Anyway, eighty nine that same year, uh,
Singer meets a lawyer, a New York lawyer named Edward Clark,
(13:08):
and um, it's around that time also that he helps
another guy that he was doing some work for, Pomeroy,
sort of make a better sewing machine. So he didn't
invent a sewing machine. There were other people who had
sewing machines on the market. The main one really is
a guy named Elias how But this guy Pomeroy had
a sewing machine in his shop and Isaac Singer made
(13:29):
it better, and then he decided he should patent his
part of of the sewing machine and try to make
some money on that. That is how he and Edward
Clark started working together. Because of the factory burning down,
he didn't have a lot of money, so he gave
like most of the patent to the lawyer, three three
eighths of it or something. So that's kind of a lot,
(13:50):
not quite half, but still a lot for just being
the lawyer helping with the legal process. Yeah. I don't
think people do that so much anymore. Now you just
pay cash and you keep the pet um. In any case,
eighteen fifty is when his sewing machine really becomes a thing,
and some call it, you know, the world's first practical
(14:11):
sewing machine that was used in homes. So not the
first sewing machine, but the first one to really get
sort of practical and popular. Okay, it's eighteen fifty now, Okay,
So now he is sort of, you know, for real
as a grown man and he's got this invention. But
the problem is there are a lot of other people
(14:33):
that have patents on sewing machines. So how's he going
to handle that. We'll talk about it right after this.
So it's eighteen fifty and our can we call him
our hero. Okay, okay, now our hero Isaac Merritt Singer
(14:55):
has essentially air quotes invented a sell machine that you know,
operates at nine hundred stitches per minute. It takes the
time to make a shirt down from like fourteen minutes
to one minute. I mean, I could not make a
shirt in one minute with the best machine, but the
professional seamstress can do that. There you go. And in
(15:15):
those days, of course, people were making their clothes at home.
Fashion wasn't the way it is now. There was no
such thing as fast fashion back in those days. Uh.
In any case, in nineteen fifty that is when uh
Singer first has his company, I am Singer and Co.
And in eighteen fifty one, the patent he had applied
for comes through and it's issued again, and part of
(15:36):
it is owned by his attorney slash business partner, Edward Clark.
It's patent number eight to nine four, which I just
kind of love because the numbers are so huge now, yeah,
I think like seven or eight. It's it's absurd. Yeah,
And that was eight to nine four. That was the
first Singer brand sewing machine. It was August twelfth, eighteen
fifty one. Now I mentioned in the first segment that
(16:00):
there were other people that had patented sewing machines before Singer,
So how come he became so famous? Like why do
we not if I say name a sewing machine, you
don't go, oh the how? Yeah? I don't think anybody
even knows that that was ever a thing, right, I
mean a lie is how like maybe rings a vague
bell for somebody, but not really. Um, here's the thing.
(16:21):
The machine was good, it was practical, Maybe it was
slightly better than the others, it's unclear, but really what
happened was all of these guys started duking it out.
They were all fighting in through the early eighteen fifties.
They were all trying to sell their own sewing machines
into the marketplace, where, by the way, I remember, everybody
made their own clothes essentially, or maybe maybe if you
(16:42):
had real money, you could buy it at sort of
the dry goods store clothing, But more likely you bought
your material at the dry goods store, you brought it
home and you either sewed it by hand or you
got one of these fancy new sewing machines, and that's
how you got your clothes. So they're all trying to
sell their machines, and they're all accusing each other of
patent infringement and suing each other. And it's funny because
(17:06):
so many, so much of what happened in in Isaac
Singer's life feels like it could happen now. That's very true,
right with all the lawsuits of each other, of you
took this piece of my idea and that piece of
my idea. Yeah, even his personal life, Like I don't
think of people getting divorces in the eighteen hundreds, but
like his dad got a divorce in the early eighteen hundreds,
you know, and he didn't like his step mom. Like
(17:27):
that's right out of an after school special from the
nineteen eighties, you know. Um, In any case, they're all
duking it out, fighting over these patents. As there's a
bunch of different manufacturers, one called Grover and Baker, one
called Singer, we know him, one called Wheeler and Wilson.
How was in the middle of all of this. And
then there was this lawyer. His name was Orlando Potter.
(17:49):
He was a lawyer and he was president also of
the Grover and Baker company. And it was his sort
of brilliant idea that changed the game for Singer because
his idea was that rather than squandering all the profits
on all these lawsuits back and forth, that they should
pool their patents. Okay, so basically, we'll all take our
(18:12):
ideas and we'll put them in a big pot and
we'll take our respective pieces of the pie. Essentially. Yes,
it was really the first ever patent pool. And the
idea was because they had all sort of patented different
parts of the machine or different parts of the process,
they would put them all together in a pool. They
would license their idea, essentially, their pooled idea to whoever
(18:32):
wanted to buy it, and they would all share in
the profits. So that's what they did. So they stopped
screwing around with the courts and they got to make
in sewing machines. Uh. Some of them took their money
and ran, but Singer decided to stick with it and
make these machines. And he then took his sort of
tenacity and started selling sewing machines like crazy, yeah, to
(18:56):
everybody and anybody, right, like one of the early companies
in in era to go international. And I think this
is interesting too. It's the very first one, right because
how many times have we had good ideas. Not you
and I, but anyone had a good idea about something
based off of an already existing invention. That's essentially what
this was, right, is you we're going to make the
needle work differently, or the mechanism inside that works the needle,
(19:18):
or the way the needles made that was just better
and better and better upon the same machine. But you're
right they were spending at that point in time, probably thousands,
which is a lot of money in court, just suing
the heck out of each other. They never got to
business solved that problem, right. And I think there's another
interesting point that you bring up there, which is nowadays,
if you were working inventing something, and one of the
(19:41):
things you would probably do pretty early on is higher
patent attorney to go look and see if there were
other patents already on this, and if there were, you'd
probably give up and move on. That's a good point.
But these guys were kind of into like ask for
forgiveness not permission sort of mode. Right, It's true. I
mean I think, really, let's be honest, that's how Isaac
(20:01):
Merritt Singer lived his entire life. Let's just do what
we want to do and see if we can get
away with it. Right? Who worked out for him? Right?
So the patent pool really made it possible for him
to do what he wanted to do without all the
litigation that might have ensued otherwise. And that was an
important part of the Singer Sewing Machine company story. But
(20:22):
the bigger piece of Singers success had to do with
a completely different business tactic, one that I think has
changed the game for American consumerism and maybe world consumerism
ever since. We'll talk about it right after this. So
(20:44):
we were talking about the idea of the patent pool,
this concept of grouping a bunch of patents together, and
how the decision to do that, first of all, wasn't
Singer's idea, but one of the attorneys for the other company,
one of the other companies that thought of it, but
also in that same mode of asking for forgiveness instead
of permission. While that whole thing was going on during
(21:07):
the eighteen fifties, business continued for all of these companies. So,
for example, in eighteen fifty six, when the patent pool
actually got started, they were well into making these machines
and getting all kinds of accolades for them. The year
before the patent pool even became a thing. In eighteen
fifty five, Singer was awarded the first prize at the
(21:27):
World's Fair in Paris, France, So they were already getting
all kinds of accolades. And it was that year eighteen
fifty five again before the patent pool really became a thing,
that Singer became the largest selling brand of sewing machines internationally.
So they weren't waiting for the results of all of
these lawsuits. They were just plowing ahead, kind of along
(21:50):
the lines of some of our other bad boys. We
talked about Elon Musk, and we talked about Adam Newman
from We Work, and these are kind of the same
kind of guys who just moved forward and do things
the way they want to do them, and they work
it out in the courts later. I mean, Uber certainly
was famous for that. I mean Uber went international and
despite whatever laws were in their way. Yeah, they did
(22:12):
some underhanded things in certain cities. They broke regulations, They
just did things without asking permission. They just went in
and did their thing and waited for the cities, the countries,
the localities, whomever to sue them. And then they brought
the lawyers in and they dealt with it. So this
is sort of the same story for Singer, right. So
eighteen fifty five they win this huge award at the
(22:34):
World's Fair, they become the largest selling brand of sewing machines.
But again, even all of that didn't necessarily cement them
in history. It was really an idea had by again
not Singer, but his business partner and lawyer Edward Clark,
who in eighteen fifty six, that same year that the
patent pool was okayed, came up with an idea that,
(22:56):
in my mind, changed consumerism. It was the first ever
American installment purchase plan. So this was before the days
of credit cards. It was really it's not that you
couldn't buy things on credit before this. You know, in
small towns where everybody knew each other, you could go
into the local store and if they knew you, they
(23:17):
would put it on your tab right and you would
pay it later. So that was essentially early buying on
credit um And there were installment plans in other parts
of the world that had sort of bubbled up but
never became as huge and popular as what Singer created
with the installment plan to buy a sewing machine. So
the idea was that sewing machines were not cheap and
(23:40):
everybody wanted one, but the average you know, eighteen fifties
eighteen sixties housewife couldn't afford it. So they come up
with this installment plan, you know, for easy payments. We
all know that, right, And when you think about what
that developed into over time with credit cards and how
(24:02):
we now so many Americans, myself included, live beyond our
means by way of credit and by way of installment
plans essentially, except now we just generally do it in
a more centralized way, right through a single company instead
of through each individual person you get stuff from. Yeah,
although I think a lot of people probably have something,
(24:23):
for example, like a Best Buy credit card, the store
cards and right, and so you're buying all maybe not
just a single machine, but all of your machines on
on an installment plan essentially, especially when they give you
that zero percent interest for however many months that is
the equivalent of an installment plan, is yeah. Um. And
it also of course reminds me very much of the
(24:43):
modern infomercials, where you still are literally buying things with
the three easy payments or the four easy payments. I mean,
there's everybody doing that to this day, from like Chuck
Norris and the Total Gym to Proactive to uh I
think we pulled one right now. The Extraordinary slim Cycle
is just six payments of thirty. But wait, there's more.
(25:06):
Will also include ten free, fun downloadable videos. I am
so confident that you will love slim Cycle as much
as I do that I'm offering a one dent satisfaction guarantee.
If you don't think this is the most comfortable and
effective bike you've ever used, just send it back, no
questions asked. I mean, I don't think any of us
(25:27):
feels like those kinds of infomercials are new per se,
but they obviously still work. And Singer was doing this
all the way back in the eighteen fifties. Now listen,
I wish there was audio from commercialists from back in
the eighteen fifties, but uh no. However, they were doing
it still a hundred years after that in the nineteen fifties,
(25:47):
and we did pull a Singer commercial from that era.
Take a lesson. Remember the Singer Economy model in this
beautiful walnut cabinet is only a hundred and forty with
a down payment of only four and with either model
you'll receive the famous Singer Sewing course absolutely free. So
trying one of these singers in your home soon, there's
(26:09):
no charge, no obligation of any kind. Just phone or
stop in at your Singer Sewing Center tomorrow and ask
for your free home trial. So how do you take
your expensive invention in the eighteen fifties and make it
accessible to everybody with four easy payments? That's how you
do it. And just wait, there's more, right exactly, they
(26:33):
would have things they tossed in for folks who incentivize
them to come out and buy. And it's so crazy
to think that all of this started with the sewing machine.
Yeah right, yeah, And listen, in fairness to Singer and
the company, they were still patenting new ideas for the
sewing machine. Once he got focused around this invention and
(26:55):
this machine, he clearly was a smart guy, just like
some of these other men we were talking about in
modern times. These are brilliant men, they're also just kind
of wild men, and he was sort of the same way.
He had absolutely had an inventor's mind. He introduced the
first lightweight domestic sewing machine called the Grasshopper and trademark
that in eighteen fifty eight. Um, he was, you know,
(27:17):
patenting more and more pieces. I think, did you say
they did the first foot pedal? Right, Yeah, Singer was
the company that invented the foot pedal part of the
sewing machine that I think so many of us remember,
you know, grandma pedaling as she sewed the clothes. Yeah,
absolutely so. Also in eighteen sixty, Isaac Singer had consolidated
enough patents in the field to allow him to really
(27:37):
get into mass production. So by eighteen sixty later that year,
his company became the largest manufacturer of sewing machines in
the world. Five years later, in eighteen sixty five, they
renamed the company to the Singer Manufacturing Company, and that
same year they deliver the quote new Family sewing machine.
That was the title of that one, or the name
(27:58):
brand of that one, the New Fly sewing Machine. Keep
in mind, this is like Civil War era. Yeah, it's
incredible to think, right, because every time I'm reading the story,
it feels like it should have been something that was
happening in the nineteen fifties, not the eighteen fifties, right,
because they were they were machines, but they weren't like
you know, they weren't like what we think of today,
(28:19):
made of plastic and plugged in and right like they
were you pedaled and you you know right, I mean,
it was a whole different thing. It really was absolutely
old school machinery. Yes, absolutely, Um. In any case, the
Civil War ended in was that, and you know, the
business kept going and as I mentioned, they were already international,
(28:41):
but by this point they had a demand for sewing
machines in the UK that was now so high that
they were ready to open a factory there in the UK.
So they opened a factory in Glasgow. Glasgow the gift
to say it with a British accent or doesn't count. Um,
and Singer I believe did some traveling back and forth. Correct, Yeah,
(29:03):
he did a little bit of back and forth traveling.
And some of that comes back to his love life,
which I think we I want to sort of save
his love life almost to the end of the episode
because it's such a story. Oh yes, this is a
total made for TV movie. Yes, and we do have
(29:24):
one more sort of important business piece to the puzzle here,
and that is the trademark. So the Singer trademark was
a red s girl trademark. That's what it was sort
of known as. It debuted in eighteen seventy. It was
produced in multiple languages and became one of the most
(29:45):
recognized trademarks in the world. Um, it was not the
first trademark, but it was the same year as the
first trademark, so it was one of the earliest trademarks.
The first one was actually that same year, eight teen
seventy by a company called Averael Paints. They had the
first U S registered trademark. Uh. Interesting to note that
(30:08):
a lot of the other sort of trademark history is
in and around beer, which is not surprising. That's one
of the oldest industries in the world, right, is alcohol
fermentation stuff like that. Yeah, so the first official like
you know, beer trademark in the UK was five years
after the Averael Paints in the Singer trademarks was eighteen
seventy five and it was the bass beer the red
(30:29):
triangle logo that you could probably still picture. That was
the first registered trademark in the UK. Yeah, but there's
a little bit of a like way before that story.
Oh you think that was early, but way before that
in the thirteen hundreds. There are some unofficial claims to
the earliest trademarks. So Low and Brow beer claims to
(30:50):
have the oldest continually used trademark in the world, saying
that they started using there as in three and then
still Artois, a beer that a lot of people know
it claims continuous use of its trademark from before that,
even from thirteen sixty six. That is wow, that's incredible.
(31:10):
So they weren't registered in the modern systems, but they
were used and protected essentially since the dreds. That's crazy. Yeah,
the trademarking is goes that far back, I know. But
of course again, Singer in terms of US trademarks was
one of the earliest ones in that first year of
registered trademarks with him. Yeah. Absolutely, So in any case,
(31:35):
the business is growing, he's got patents, he's got trademarks,
he's got wives, he's got kids. It's the whole thing. Um.
I have to say. He never did get kicked out
of the company. He died a millionaire with fourteen million
dollars at the time in so you know, he was
in his sixties. It wasn't an old demand, but relatively speaking,
(31:57):
by the time period he you know, he was older. Uh,
and he had a lot of stress because he had
a lot of women and a lot of kids. Um,
but he had fourteen million to his name when he died,
and that had to get divided up. Well, which could
you know, fourteen millions still a lot to divide up today,
but mind you, in eighteen seventy five dollars, it's almost
(32:18):
three hundred and thirty million dollars, so quite a fortune. Yeah.
So if you think of like the richest sort of playboy,
you know, who gets away with bad boy behavior, think
of this guy, because that kind of money hundreds of
millions of dollars equivalent in that era. Yeah, and he
had just enough women and kids to uh really, as
(32:40):
you said, make it made for a movie. Yeah. All right,
So we have to get to you know, his life
and his love life next. But I guess we should
wrap the business story by saying, after his death, the
company went on and continued to uh innovate and grow,
and ultimately, you know, as we know, fashion became something
(33:05):
done by you know, always still to this day, done
by machine, of course, but mostly in factories and much
less and less over the years at homes, at home
sewing became much more of a hobby and less of
a necessity. But Singer still remains to this day one
of the biggest sewing machine brands out there. Yeah, and
they're still innovating new stuff using computers and crazy technology
(33:26):
all the way up to today. Yeah, there's an app
for that. There's literally a Singer app. I don't know
why you would need one because I don't sell, but
it exists. So yeah, I mean there's a whole lot
of you know, sort of global history as they you know,
I mentioned that Singer had market share at one point
that was all the way back. They were crushing it
(33:47):
so that that that would qualify as a monopoly rope.
And by the way, I should also mention before we
get to the love life, that there was some of
the I have a big personality and I need my
name on everything about the Singer brand. Also about history.
They had some famous buildings over time, one in Manhattan
that was forty seven stories tall. Now this is long
after Singer is gone, but uh, they had this tallest
(34:10):
ever building in the world at the time, which was
forty seven stories. It was, but they lost their title
for tallest building one year later. That was that period
of time though, right when everyone was trying to out
inch the other exactly. Everybody's one one story taller, want
two stories taller? Right? Um. That said, the building did
hold a really interesting record of being one of the
(34:31):
tallest buildings, I think the tallest building ever to be
purposely demolished. Oh wow, right, some stories is a very
tall building that haven't you know, to take down? They
essentially took it down to put something bigger in its place. Um,
And it held that title until eleven. And of course
we know that the Twin towers didn't come down like
purposefully because of being demolished. So so the Singer building
(34:55):
is still the biggest to purposely be taken down. That's incredible. Yeah, crazy, uh.
In any case, he was clearly a success despite his
playboy craziness, which we have to end the story with
and which we will do right after this. So Singer
(35:18):
obviously a hugely successful man, you know, died with fourteen
million dollars to his name, which we said was how
many hundreds of millions? A right, and a company that
continues to this day. And while it is certainly less
of a household name. Now, that's really because the industry changed.
There's a lot of fascinating pieces to the story. For example,
(35:38):
they never really branched out far beyond the sewing machine, right.
I mean, they did occasionally acquire other companies along the way,
long after Singer had died, that did other things, but
the Singer company itself was always sewing machines. And by
the way, it of course over the years has been
bought and sold and all of those things. But at
the end of the day, the personality behind the brand
(36:00):
is such a story that we had to save it
for last because this goes beyond. A guy got married
and oh yeah, he also had an affair. This goes
way beyond, So like, take me all the way back
neck to like when this all starts. Okay, So he
married his first wife, wife Katherine, right in eighteen thirty
He was nineteen, she was fifteen, and they had their
first child in eighteen thirty four. Okay, so as we know,
(36:25):
there's obviously no definite records, but he was already dishonest.
He was getting bound to that right when they were
together and right about the time they had their first child.
So he's married to Katherine, they have their first child,
he is off with a woman that we said named
mary Ann Sponslor. He found her during his first tirade
through the Acting Troops and everything else like that. Well,
(36:47):
she has their first child in eighteen thirty seven, just
three years after his first child from his first wife
is born. Okay, long story short, he ends up leaving
his first wife after their second child is born to
basically live with mary Anne full time. Right, He's he's
decided that the mistresses be going, is going to become
(37:10):
the maid. He's going to go off and live with
his second family, Katherine, and they have ten kids together,
mary Anne, Yes, Katherine has to mary Anne and Isaac
have ten children together. Now remind you this, and now
we're up to twelve. This is not mentioning the kids
that we don't know about, because he had many illegitimate
(37:31):
children during his acting troop days. He was like going
out every night. Oh yeah, big time. So so he's
with Maryanne and they, like you said before, have a
very long twenty five year relationship. He's she's alongside him
when the when the Singer Corporation is blowing up and
starting to become extremely successful. They're doing so well that
(37:52):
Singer himself decides, hey, I'm going to buy a mansion
on Fifth Avenue, right, Oh yeah. So he moves Mary
Anne and the ten I think eight at the time
children into this mansion on Fifth Avenue and things are
going okay until mary Anne one day, while walking down
Fifth Avenue, spots Isaac in a carriage alongside one Mary McGonagall.
(38:15):
Now this woman isn't was an employee of Isaac's that
Mary Anne had some suspicions about. Obviously, she knows her
husband is not the most faithful man around, and he's
been spending too much time with this Mary McGonagall. Well,
come to find out she was right because when she
saw him, Mary was pregnant with Isaac's child, hold on,
(38:35):
after Isaac had already had an affair with Mary's sister.
So okay, so this he ends up. Mary Anne says,
get out, I'm kicking you out. I'm not taking this.
So he ends up getting with Mary McGonagall and they
together have five children who use a different name completely
they used the last name Matthews. Hold So now at
(38:57):
my count, we are up to sev kids. We're up
to seventeen kids with three wives or women want. Mary
Anne was never a wife, but like you said, common
law marriage. So she has five children and and come
to find out in eighteen sixty Katherine comes back into
the picture, his first wife, and she goes to have
a divorce, get a divorce from him, but comes to
(39:20):
find out that he divorced her first what he filed
for divorce a year earlier, claiming that she had an
adulterous relationship with a man named Stephen Kent Black much Yeah, yeah,
very very much. So, so she goes, fine, she signs
on the dotted line that they have an official divorce.
(39:42):
The side track to this that part of the story
is that Isaac's oldest child, William, his first son with Katherine,
ends up speaking up against his dad in court during
the divorce proceedings, which causes Isaac to completely remove him
from the will. So his oldest son got not a
penny of that three hundred and some odd million dollar
fortune because he called that out for being dad. Yeah right, exactly.
(40:08):
So so now he's got seventeen hold on now with
Mary McGonagall. But right, but wait, there's more, because all
of this finish is right about eighteen sixty two, because
he decides I can't do it anymore. Mary Anne is
breathing down my neck. Catherine's looking for a divorce, so
he grabs Mary mcdonagall and they run away to London.
(40:30):
In eighteen sixty two, he dies in London. He never
comes back to the US because of his reputation. Well,
come to find out there was another family he had
that nobody knew about, and it was another what is
this his fourth family at this point, with a Mary
Eastwood Walters. Now I don't know, maybe Mary was just
a very common name back then, but three of his
(40:50):
wives were named Mary. Well, if you think about it, yeah,
if you think about it, though, it made some kind
of sense because he didn't have to worry about calling
out the wrong name. Oh my god, there you go.
See we said he was a smart guy. Maybe he
looked specifically for Mary's or Mary Anne's rights. Oh my goodness.
So apparently his fourth family with this Mary Eastwood Walters
happened after Mary McGonagall affair started, but before he left
(41:15):
to London, because she was a machine worker in his
factory in New York and they also had a child together,
only one child. This was just like a fling, right,
and that was the end of it. Basically by about
eighteen seventy, come to find out he has eight teen children,
eighteen children that he claims eighteen children. But it's not
(41:40):
over yet. But wait, there is even more. With four
easy installments, you can have five easy installments of wives,
you can end up with three dozen children. Because he
finally runs away to London, he's living there for a
little while and he gets bored with Mary McGonagall, and
like a year later he goes and moves to Paris
(42:01):
to pick up a woman that he had spent some
time with back in the day and brought her back
to London and wed her. Her name Isabella Eugenie Boyer.
He's about fifty, she's about nineteen. She was. It's a rumor,
but they said she was the model for the Statue
of Liberty. So that's interesting, right. Well, she gave him
(42:23):
six more children before it was all said and done,
so he literally had tally had what eighteen plus six
twenty two or twenty four children by the time of
his death. Twenty four children, mind you, that he claimed
as his. There are many more out there who will
never know. I mean, I didn't think I would ever
(42:45):
be commenting on this kind of thing, in this podcast.
But he had some good swimmers. Yeah he did. That
is one way to phrase that. Yeah, this man was.
And that's part of the thing too, is some of
the business struggles late into the Singer Corps ration stem
from his business partners going Isaac, dude, keep it in
your pants, right, we can sew you some new pants
(43:06):
that don't have like a button fly. We'll just sew
them right up. And and it's causing a lot of
people that in the business world to not want to
do business with Singer. It starts to get shaky there
towards the end because of his reputation, because he couldn't
keep it. He had to run literally and you kind
of glossed over this, but his reputation was so bad
in the midst of all this, that's why he went
(43:26):
to the UK like he was. It wasn't just that
he was tired of all the women. He was like, Okay,
I'm starting to look bad here. I gotta go somewhere
out precisely, and then the Glasgow operation had started up previously,
and he said, oh, I went to London to be
at the new operation. Now he left because everyone hated him, right, yeah, look,
I don't know exactly if we can, you know, credit
(43:47):
his playboy behavior with his success or I don't know
what the correlation is, but I think if we have
to pull any moral of the story here for Singer
and looking at some of the comparisons we made to
some of the bad boys of modern business, I think
the correlation is just that there is a separation of
business and bad behavior when it comes to personal behavior
(44:09):
that was okay then and it's kind of still okay
now to some extent that there is a certain tolerance
in the business world for bad behavior as long as
you're performing well from a business perspective. So I guess
the moral of the story is, if you kind of
want to be a bad boy, but you have some
good ideas, you do you? I think You're okay? You
(44:31):
do you? Yeah? It worked out for Isaac Merritt Singer
pretty well. It sure did. That is our show for today.
It's all sewn up. We'll see you next time. Zography
is a production of I Heart Radio and dB Media.
I'm your host Dana Barrett, My co host is Nick Bean,
our producer is Tory Harrison, and our executive producer is
(44:54):
Jonathan Strickland. Have questions I want to give us feedback
or have a company you'd like us to cover. Email
us at info at physiography dot Show, or contact us
on social. I'm at the Danta Barrett on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram, or just search for me on LinkedIn. Thanks
for your support.
Bizography with Dana Barrett News
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Dana Barrett
Nick Bean
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