TechStuff Classic: The Sewing Machine

Holly Frey from Stuff You Missed in History Class joins the show to talk about the sewing machine and how it shaped patent law.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm the executive producer of this show and
a couple of others, and I love all things tech
and it is time for a classic episode of tech Stuff.

(00:25):
This episode originally published way back on October two thousand
and fourteen. It was about a topic that I didn't
think when I first started going into it was going
to be particularly interesting or have any controversy around it.
I was incredibly wrong. This is the sewing machine. Enjoy.

(00:46):
We want to talk about patent wars, and we've talked
about patent wars on tech Stuff before. Patent wars are
when you've got at least two, but sometimes multiple entities
all claiming ownership for some kind of technology and competing
against each other and sometimes taking each other to court
and saying nasty things about each other's moms. And you
might think that that's a pretty recent activity, you know,

(01:09):
the smartphone, that that's a big patent war, right, lots
of modern viciousness around patents. But here's the thing that
modern viciousness has a long and detailed history that we
can trace back to one of the most important pieces
of technology. I am not using hyper bowl people, this
is true to me. It's certainly a super important piece
of technology. Mean, when you look at when you look

(01:30):
at mass production, this is one of the specific pieces
of technology that makes mass production possible. I'm talking about
sewing machines. So sewing machines, as it turns out, were
the focus of one of the first major patent wars.
And the story is a complex one, filled with joy

(01:51):
and tragedy and a lot of crabbiness and some some stitches,
and there's a lot needles, a lot of that. If
any of your listeners have listened to the Stephy Maston
history class episode on this very thing, a lot of
this will be repeat information. Yeah, but it's just so fascinating,
how completely similar to modern day arguments over tech, these

(02:17):
ones where I mean it's it's it's you can draw
direct parallels. I mean, seriously, when you look at a
company trying to make a piece of technology as complex essay,
a tablet or a smartphone. Now, a tablet or a
smartphone by itself is one thing, but it's made up
of numerous individual components, some of which may not be
owned by one particular entity. The same thing is true

(02:39):
with sewing machines, as it turns out, absolutely So before
we jump into the sordid history of the sewing machine,
I thought I would remind folks what a patent is.
What's all about. So patents are that's a set of
exclusive rights granted by a government some form of agency
that has authority to an inventor or an assigning for

(03:00):
the use of an invention. Now, an invention does not
have to be a complete thing all by itself. It
could be a component of a thing, like if you
were to have a full invention. Let's say it's a
washing machine, because we've done a tech stuff episode about
washing machines, and you come up with a way to
improve washing machines so that they wash clothes, uh more

(03:23):
thoroughly or without as much bashing around, so the clothing
doesn't take as much of a beating. And you come
up with that that improvement, and then you patent it.
You can do that, that's perfectly acceptable, and then any
washing machine that would use that particular improvement would have
to either have been made by you or have received
your permission to use that specific technology. So patents can

(03:48):
be for a full invention with all the different components,
or it can be just a tiny little thing that's
an improvement. The point of it is the reason why
you would want to patent it is that you get
those ex elusive rights to use that technology. Now, in
return for that, you have to disclose how that technology works.
You submit a patent application that has a full description

(04:11):
of the mechanism and the purpose of your invention, and
that becomes publicly available, and once the patent expires, which
they do, anyone can access that information and make use
of it. But during the course of that patent, that
the lifespan of that patent, it's all you, boss. They
got to come through you. Yeah, Although that is an

(04:32):
interesting one related to what we're talking about today, because
there were several instances on the road to the sewing
machine actually becoming a fully fledged thing where there were
some FIBs told in the patent filings so that they
could keep their proprietary information to themselves, so when people
tried to replicate them, they did not always work. Right. See,
you could if you wanted to, if you invented something.

(04:53):
There's nothing nothing that requires you to get a patent.
You could keep it secret and say this magical technology
is mine and minal loan. But the danger of that,
of course, is if someone gets hold of it and
figures out how it works, they could then make the
same thing with and you would have no protection. Not
only could they make the same thing, they could file
a patent for it, and then you would no longer
be able to use the thing you invented. Yeah, it's

(05:14):
all about first rites. Yeah, so, as it turns out,
and we haven't even gotten into the complication of filing
for a patent in one country versus filing for a
button and another. But we've we've hemmed in hod long
enough about patents. Let's start off. Tell me what what
was sewing before the sewing machine. Well, most people would

(05:34):
probably recognize it if they thought about pre sewing machines sewing,
they would think of an needle and thread. But even
way before that, there were people using bones and sticks
to kind of poke holes into fabrics, usually leathers, and
then they would pass a lace through. It was not
all one continuous thing where the lace was attached to
the the boner stick and then they added the eye

(05:55):
that circle that the whatever you're lacing material passes through. Right.
The thing that confounds me whenever I have to thread
a needle. Many people say that I think he either
got it or you don't. I don't got it. Um,
I hope I keep it forever, because I have a
few friends who are saying are getting to the age
and their eyesight isn't letting them keep it anymore. But yeah,

(06:16):
so that eventually that I was added and people were
able to do it all in one fell swoop where
they poked the whole and passed the binding material through,
and that also developed things like embroidery. But it wasn't
really until the Industrial Revolution that stitching became mechanized. And
even pre Industrial Revolution in the mid seventeen hundreds, where
kind of industry was first starting to get seated, is

(06:39):
really where we started having first people on record actually
filing things. Right. So you have Charles Wisenthal here who
received a patent for a needle for a sewing machine,
but it had a distinct disadvantage and that it was
a design for a needle for a machine that didn't exist. Yeah,
he just really felt like he had the needle situation

(06:59):
where down and eventually the rest would follow. You've got
to really nail the needle. Is his approach, which is true.
The needle how it came to be where it is
today really took a lot of iterations. And his needle
had was pointed on both ends, and it had an eye.
But the eye was in the middle, which is not
If anybody knows a modern sewing machine or hand sewing needle,
the eye is usually not in the middle. Right. So

(07:21):
then we move forward to we have Thomas st who
I love the title of his patents. We talked about
this in the history podcast. It's it's so succaint, it's
it's so delightful and just completely rebos. Do you want
to read it? Let me, let me do this all right?
So he's an English cabinet maker, so uh sorry, listeners,

(07:42):
Here we go an entire new method of making and
completing shoes, boots, splatter, dashes, clogs, and other articles by
means and tools, and by means of tools and machines
also invented by me for that purpose, and of certain
compositions of the nature of japan or varnish, which will
be very advantageous in many useful applications. End quote. Don't

(08:04):
you just feel like this is sewing as described by
a Monty Python sketch. It does feel like John Cleese
is the person who needs to deliver that patent title.
For me, it's Terry Jones, but we all have our favorite.
That's fair. You went more Welsh. That's all right, that's
it's fine with that. So he's actually describing three different
machines in this patent um. So the second of the three,

(08:25):
which is why it's so crazy wordy, I mean Japan
and varnish, which are the words used for like these
coding um methods have nothing to do with stitching. But
he kind of lumped everything together. And he was a
cabinet maker. I think maybe he didn't like to file
a lot of paper. Yeah, that's probably one of those
things where thought, goodness, gracious, this is a lot of work.
Let's let's just lump it all together. One very wordy

(08:47):
document will cover me. So the second part of his
patent was actually the one for stitching, and it really
wasn't terribly practical. It had a lot of components that
we actually associate with modern sewing machines. So it had
arm with the needle, it had a continuous thread from
a spool, uh and it had a table set up
that the cloth would sit on, and those all still

(09:08):
persist in some form or another. But his is a
case where there's no actual example of his machine having
been built, although in eighteen seventy three Newton Wilson, who
was from Great Britain, found the plans and he did
build this machine, but it did not work. And this
is one of those ones that we talked about a
little bit ago, where the suspicion is that he didn't

(09:28):
entirely disclose what he was getting, right, leave a few
things out of the patent design so that folks don't
automatically go out there and actually start making one uh.
One thing about patents, by the way, there's no guarantee
that your design has to work. It has to it
has to be reasonably you know, the people at the
patent offices have to reasonably believe that you you believe

(09:50):
it will work the way you've designed it. But you
don't have to prove. Yeah, there's not a proofing stage design. Yeah,
you don't have to bring one in and say, well, here,
let me put it in motion and show you that
all the parts move the way I've described it in
the patent. It really is just meant to prevent other
people from making that same design without your permission. All right. Well,
then in four we've got this story about Thomas Stone

(10:11):
and James Henderson who were issued a patent in France
for their own kind of sewing machine. Right. Yeah. It
kind of created an overcast stitch. So if you don't
know what that is, I do not. Um. If you
see like a situation where two pieces of cloth are
bound together and there's a stitch that passes through each
one and kind of spirals around the edges and then

(10:33):
back through, that's an overcast okay, all right, um, so
this was similar. It's also called a whip stitch when
you do it by hand, so it's very simple. But
it could work on all different kinds of fabrics. And
it was able to stitch curves. Okay, so it's not
just a straight line like some of the other devices
will be talking about. Correct, Like a lot of them

(10:54):
will only go in a straight line, but this one
could handle curves. That The one big drawback of it, though,
was that it did not have a continuous thread feed,
so there was a lot of stopping and going and
re threading of needles and hating. So it saved time,
we think theoretically, I say that with a question mark
on purpose. Right, maybe it saves time for someone who
just really hates the motion of actually making a stitch. Well,

(11:17):
or if you're doing like large scale things like leathers
and probably help. So that same year you have John
Duncan of Glasgow here patenting an embroidery machine, which is
not quite the same thing as a stitching machine, correct.
I mean it does do stitches, but it's not the
same sort of utilitarian things that would hold together pants. Right,

(11:38):
we'll just make the pants beautiful. I've learned that through
a better experience. In seven we have Edward Walter Chapman
and Walter Chapman. It's not confusing at all receiving a
British patent three thousand, seventy eight. That's another thing that
I think is interesting. You look at the history of
sewing machines and you look at those patent numbers. Yeah,
and when they're still in the four digit range, that's incredible.

(12:02):
If guys go to the patent I'll go to like
Google search for patents and look up any patent that's
been issued over the last couple of years. We're talking
in the millions here, Yeah, and this is when they
were still in the thousands, which is pretty incredible. It
really does show that the patent industry here was very young.
Oh yeah, this was the one that allowed a machine

(12:23):
that had a needle that would not have to pass
all the way through the fabric. It could just puncture it,
uh slightly and then pull back out and make the
stitch that way, right, which is how modern machines still
were for the most part. I think there's a couple
of specialty machines that do different things. But yeah, so
it had two needles. One, as you said, punched in
and passed the thread down. Another kind of shuttled through

(12:45):
it and then it got pulled back up. So um,
continuous stitching via these two different thread feeds. Cool. And
then we have my favorite name on our list. It's
one of my favorites eight thirty. So it's bartelling me Himnier.
I love a good French name. Yeah, that's a great one,
as there's two th in there, and as I recall,

(13:07):
that's a hard tea but I could be wrong. It
is it is. And his machine made a chain stitch
and there are still machines very similar to this functioning today.
They're not used a whole lot because it's one of
those things. You may have even come across them periodically.
If you ever have, like an article of clothing that's
maybe not super pricy, you may be bought it, you know,
a cheap store, and you pull one thread and the

(13:28):
whole thing starts coming out. That's often a chain stitch
because it's the one thread holding everything together, so there's
nothing stopping it from continuing to unravel. Right. That's what
I always get nervous now whenever I see a loose thread,
and I'm more of a snipper than a than a
tugger at it. Not I'm a yanker, but I know
I can fix it if it all goes a right. Yeah.
For me, it's it's fixing means going out and buying

(13:50):
a new one. We're gonna pause on our stitching right
now with the sewing machine and take a quick break.
What I love about this story is it's interesting because
it's a real life story that mirrors something that is

(14:13):
um a popular misconception. And what I mean by that
is in the story you have Tumonier who had a
shop in Paris. Uh. He had lots of these different machines,
eighty of them working at a time, and Taylor's people
who sewed by hand, stormed his store and destroyed some

(14:35):
of the machinery because they didn't want to be put
out of a job. And the reason why I say
this is interesting is that there's a story that we
have told on tech stuff before that is erroneous and
uh and in fact I have been guilty of of
pushing this forward. The idea of sabotage being named after sabo,
as in the French word for shoe. The story is

(14:57):
that you had often it was told about weavers who
came in and threw their shoes into large mechanized looms
in order to foul the workings and destroy them. As
it turns out, that's not necessarily true. The first the
first appearance of the word sabotage doesn't come until in
the written word, as far as I can tell, until

(15:18):
which tells me that this incident, which happened in around
the mid eighteen hundreds, could have given birth to a
word involving tailors that would have replaced sabotage, and they
just didn't capitalize on it. I want it to include
Timonier somehow I got totally Timoniate today at work, walked

(15:39):
in and they just ambushed me. Yeah. So they came
and destroyed his shop and he had to flee. And
he did give financial backing, uh so that he could
continue his work and develop new machines. But unfortunately, uh
and he got some additional patents as well, both in
France and and Britain. But the revolution kind of caused

(16:01):
his legacy to get put on the back burner. Yet
there were some important things that people were attending to
at the time. Yeah, not so much with the let's
make machines. Now, we've got an American inventor coming up next,
so let's just take a moment to go America. Well,
and he becomes very important in the patent battles. So
this is Walter Hunt you're talking about here. Yeah. So

(16:23):
he made a machine that it created a lock stitch.
It used to thread sources, very similar to the bobbing
and school method you would see modern machines. Um and
this you know, of course, was different than the single
thread chain stitch of Timoni. A successful machines and he
kind of was a busy bee he had a lot
of inventions going at the same time, and so it

(16:44):
wasn't like this sewing machine was his baby and he
had really put his heart and soul into it. He
was kind of like, no, no, he's ever gonna be
interested in this, and he sold it. So he sold
the patent off to he didn't even have the patent.
He just I go, that's right, he didn't even patent
this invention. He's like, yeah, I could use the money.
He sold it to a man named George a aerosmith
and was basically like, yeah, well, you know, I'll fund

(17:05):
some other projects with whatever I make off of this.
It's not that important. Um. As we said, he comes
up later and becomes very important to remember him. And
we'll also point out his machine was one that Jonathan
referenced earlier that would only go in straight lines. You
couldn't really work curves with it, right, so that that
certainly limits its usefulness. Uh. Now, we also have to

(17:30):
acknowledge the fact that there's a challenge in really talking
about the history of the sewing machine because of an
event that happened in that the mid eighteen hundreds, early
to mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah, we had a little bit
of a fire in the patent office. Yeah, as it
turns out, patents are flammable. Yes, some one had patented
the the the not the inflammable that would also be flammable,

(17:53):
but the impossible to burn patent. Yeah, And it wasn't
a time where they were making tons of backups. It
was kind of like you find ELLT and you go
on your way. Because we're still in the thousands. They
haven't really gotten their game figured out yet, right, not
to mention the fact that they're making Making duplicates is
no easy task at this time, so they thought, well,
it's safe enough. Yeah, that fire was in eighteen thirty six,

(18:16):
so they really did not have a plan in place
to keep duplicate copies. And as a consequence, there are
actually a lot some sources will say that there are
a lot of kind of partial patent documents that still
exists that like they mentioned a needle, or they mentioned
something sewing related, but like the attribution portion of the
document has been too damaged and they don't know who

(18:38):
filed it. So there could be families out there that
could have, for all we know, inherited great wealth. But
we'll never know because the capriciousness of fire robbed them
of their place in history. Fire and it's ways possibly
on Martha's vineyard. In eighteen forty two, we've got John J. Greenoff,
who is the first guy, first American, to get a
patent for the sewing machine that we have a record

(19:00):
of anyway. Um, so even though he made his invention
after Hunt had, Hunt had not patented it, and as
you have in your notes here, the aerosmith apparently never
got around the patenting it either. So, uh, this is
the first one in the American patent system. Yeah, he
there was no replication of his He basically kind of

(19:22):
was one and done. Yes, So he made a prototype
and then not a production model. Yeah, there's we don't
know if he didn't get funding or if he just
abandoned the idea and moved on to something else. But
it was only a year later when the second U. S.
Patent for a sewing machine came about, and that was
issued to Benjamin W. Bean, which is a great name,
I know. Um, and he created a unique development and

(19:43):
that his machine was the first that actually fed the
fabrics through gears. So for the stitchers in the house,
all three of us, um that's similar to feed dogs,
and if you don't stitch, what a feed dog is.
If you've ever looked at a sewing machine, you may
see these two. They almost looked like little feet that
come up and kind of kick at your fabric as
you're showing, and they have rigid edges and that's kind

(20:05):
of pulling your fabric through as you go right, so
you don't have to put through as much effort, you
don't have to worry about misguiding the fabric. So it
helps feed the fabric through as you're stitching. Yes, sometimes
it creates great drama and it eats fabric, but not
very often. Um and his also had a clamp mechanism
to attach it to a table, so that was also
a new development. Uh, and there are still machines made

(20:27):
to do that. Also that year, in eighteen forty three,
we got George H. Corliss, who uh you know, he
was also a busy body making making a steam engine.
That's pretty cool. We did a full episode in Tech
Stuff on steam engine. So if you guys are are
big into that and you really want to know about
the development of the steam engine, here's a here's an
interesting little fact. The original steam engines didn't push with steam.

(20:51):
They rather would pull by letting steam condense and create
a vacuum, thus pulling a piston down rather than pushing
a piston out. But we go into full detail and
tech stuff, so I don't need to redo the whole thing.
It is exciting, it's actually not cool, it's actually quite hot,
but but ump up. So Cordless had what's considered the

(21:13):
third u S sewing machine patents. His performed what is
called a saddle stitch, which is a specialized stitch that's
used to this day to join leather together. Uh, it
kind of keeps it all stable. If anybody has ever
tried to sew with leather, if you've had like a
leather pouch or anything, Uh, it can present some challenges
in terms of how it because it's so rugged usually

(21:36):
and tough, it will chew on threads and or even
if you have a lacing, the lacing even though it's leather,
also we'll kind of get chewed up over time. So
a saddle stitch kind of gives you a tighter stitch
and it prevents some of that friction. Okay, cool, And
then also just a year later in eighteen forty four,
we've got James Rogers getting the fourth US sewing machine pad.

(21:57):
And you may all wonder why we're covering every single patent.
The Patent Wars will make all clear. Everybody's gonna be
really apparent, and it's it's it's important because again we're
trying to illustrate the fact that a lot of these
patents were not revolutionary devices that completely reinvented the machine.
They were sometimes incremental improvements that had a remarkable difference

(22:21):
from earlier machines, but it was one tiny element, right,
not necessarily a full reworking. Yeah. So yeah, James Rogers
patent was really only had a tiny change to beans design,
and that was that the gears were kind of in
a different place and that allowed him to be able
to design a different needle that was shaped a little

(22:43):
more simply and would be easier to replicate. Um. And
so pretty much every patent that came after this used
this simpler set up that built on Bean's design, So
it really set a precedent here. But now we're going
to the star of the show. Okay, who's the star
of the show because not being a big sewing machine guy,

(23:03):
but you watch Schoolhouse Rock growing Up? Right, I did
he was in it? Was he? Yeah, in some mother
Necessity episode. I'll have to go watch my DVDs. Alias
can you help me with my sewing? So it's an
alias here. We're talking about Elias Howe Jr. All right,
And there's even a play on his name where he

(23:24):
tells her he's gonna fix everything and she says alias
how And it's very witty to the sewing nerds in right,
all three of your three of us. So Elias how
was born in Spencer, Massachusetts in eighteen nineteen. Uh, and
when he was a teenager, he decided to go and

(23:45):
seek his fortune as a machinist, which was a brand
new job in the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, he was kind
of he had some bravado. He was not afraid of
kind of breaking out on his own and making his
way in the world. He certainly didn't appear to be
shy once we get into that. Noars, Oh, he was
a very smart man. Yeah, so he's going to Uh
he ends up as a machinist overhearing some talk about

(24:09):
the idea of of a sewing machine and starts to
kind of apply his own ingenuity. How would I achieve
this sort of thing. So he's important to remember, yeah,
and he um So, he was granted the fifth U S.
Patent in September of eighteen six. And it's one of
those things that I have to laugh because every year

(24:29):
when September comes around, you see the today on this day,
Elias how invented the sewing machine, and I'm like, back
up the truck. Not entirely accurate, right, It's like like
you know Edison invented the light bulb, all right, No,
as an improved and not a Eureka moment where it
comes from nowhere, although he did sometimes say that like
he had it kind of fully universally on his own.
That's very tesla like to Yeah. Um so, this was

(24:53):
patent number four thousand, seven fifty in the United States,
you know, the previous one we gave. The number two
was the British patent. So and in both cases you
see that these are very very early on during the
patent offices existence. Yeah, they're numbering schemes were kind of
neck and neck in terms of where they were at
in terms of um uh accession order. Um So, this

(25:14):
patent was actually his second version of the machine that
he patented. He had another prototype a year before that
was capable of sewing, but he um, he fine tuned
it a little bit more. And house patent is very
important because it makes five very specific claims about how
the machine is going to work, and they come up

(25:34):
a lot in court battles like yeah, so this is
where I was talking about how you can make claims
within a patent and those claims will protect elements of
your invention. And claims can be everything from specific physical
uh mechanical ways that the machine works to UH specific

(25:56):
method like an implementation. We see that to day in
ways that are are less um. They're they're more difficult
to understand because if you're talking about a physical machine,
you can say the physical machine does it in this way,
and you can see whether or not the machine is
actually doing it in that way. When we talk about today,
we're talking about stuff like you know, resizing images by

(26:19):
pinching or or moving your fingers further apart from each other,
and it starts to get a little wibbly wobbly time
you whiney when you are trying to say, oh, well,
this is this is a method that is unique that
I came up with and no one else can use
it unless they come through me. That's uh, it's one
of those evolutions of the patent office that we're still

(26:40):
trying to kind of reconcile. Yeah, it's not all black
and white, which is why you get into these huge
battles and arguments and things go to court and you
hear about Apple having to pay money, but then Samsung
has to pay all the money, right, Yeah, and sometimes
it just sometimes everyone just ends up like, well, let's
just all say we gave each other the money when
we supposed to call today. But anyway, there were these

(27:03):
five elements. Did you want to cover any of them?
You have all of them written out here they are,
and they're written out long because I cut and pasted
it from another document, but I'll kind of do the
short version. So the first was he describes how he's
going to form a seam by using a curve needle
to go through the cloth and um a bobbin to

(27:23):
kind of connect to that and and make the stitch,
similar to how we've talked about before this to thread version.
The second is how the thread is going to get
lifted and passed through the needle eye. There's a lifting
rod involved. That's very important. The third is how the
thread is going to be passed out by the shuttle,
so it has a lot to do with the tension

(27:44):
and how it passes through at a consistent rate. The
fourth is um how a couple of levers go together
and enact. They're sort of mechanisms on the string or
the thread that's involved. And the fifth is how the
cloth is held in place by a baster plate, uh,

(28:04):
which is still a thing that happens like now, if
you drop your foot down on your machine, it's kind
of pressing the cloth onto the plate of your machine.
That's that keeps it from going just flying away when
you're trying to stitch on it very important as I
understand it, in the sewing process. Yes, most machines made
today won't won't stitch at all if you don't have
to press your foot down because they know they'll just

(28:24):
be wasting everyone's time. So how didn't meet with immediate
success with this design? Actually, he tried for a while
to get people here in the United States excited about it,
and no one seemed to really give him much attention.
So he ended up selling the patent rights to a

(28:44):
or at least the British patent rights, I should say
to William Thomas for the princely sum of two fifty
British pounds sterling. Uh and uh, I like, I like
the other. Note here he also adapted his machine to
make umbrellas and corsets. That's fabulous. Yeah, I mean, I'm
in the market. We're both right now. So well, when

(29:04):
we talked about this on History, Tracy was saying, I
never thought about it before, but umbrella's, in course, it's
really are quite a lot alike. And that you know,
you have a casing and you have these rigid elements
that passed through it and hold it all in shape.
And at this point it would have been all steelbone,
course tree. So it was very similar to an umbrella, right,
except that the main difference, at least in my experience,

(29:26):
is that it's a relief to have an umbrella and
a relief to get rid of a corset. So don't
get it started. Of course, it's are good for you
if they're well fitted. They protect your back, they give
you a great posture. Those tight lasers are a whole
different universe. Yeah. I worked at the Georgia Renaissance Festival
so I have a very specific experience of watching ladies. Know,

(29:47):
a good foundation courset will keep your clothes in place.
It holds up all those Victorian layers if it's a
Victorian courset. So I'm kind of going from the time
period we're talking about. They're they're not mystery torture devices.
Well really, we're not intended for that. You will clearly
need to have you come in and give a talk
because because those ladies, let me tell there is a
lot of technology and physics and a courset either got

(30:09):
to support from below or from above. It's fabulous. Well,
moving on in the the evolution of the sewing machine,
we move up to and the sixth US sewing machine
patent from John A. Bradshaw, which was a little bit snarky. Yeah,
he talks about How's patent design in his patent and

(30:30):
kind of says that it's bungling and it's an incumbrance
to the action of the machine when he talks about
the needle. So not only can How not get manufacturers
interested in his device, he has the next UH patent
UH petitioner completely dis him, totally trash in his work
even while he's building on it. He's still kind of

(30:52):
like he was onto something, but I really have this
thing figured out, Like, okay, well I can tell you
why it didn't do great with the manufacturers. Wonderful. So
eighteen nine we get how coming back to the United States, Uh,
he had gone to England, like we said to say,
to sell the British patent off. And when he comes
back he sees that that that what had been kind

(31:15):
of a quiet, little tiny niche industry was starting to
take off. Yeah. The seventh patent for the sewing machine
have been issued to Charles Morey and Joseph B. Johnson
in eighteen forty nine, and they were really some of
the first two that were like, we need to start
selling this and making a bunch of them. And even
before they received their patent, they were selling machine, which

(31:35):
is perfectly fine. I mean, it's not like you don't
have to have a In fact, you often we'll see
today things like patent pending where people are trying to
capitalize on an idea because patent applications and patent grants
can take a long time, especially today now that you
have uh an exponentially larger number of applications coming into

(31:58):
the patent ofvice than you did way back in the
mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah, there were some other people that
were trying to improve on Marie and Johnson's machine in
the middle of eighteen forty nine. So that same year
they got their patent, there was a man named Jotham
s Conan, and he was issued a patent based on
a modification he made to their machine which just kind

(32:20):
of altered the way that the cloth was held during
the stitching. But his never really went anywhere. He didn't manufacture,
he didn't sell. But that same day that he got
his patent, another important person was getting a patent, John
Batch Elder. So yeah, this was the continuous sewing mechanism
and at an endless belt to feed the cloth into

(32:41):
the machine. Yeah, thank you John, to make sure that
you don't have to put in all that work yourself. Yeah,
But the really important thing is who Batch Elder sold
his patent too. And here we come up to the
first name in this podcast that I recognize. I am

(33:02):
Singer the Singer sewing machine. Everybody knows that well, I mean,
you know, my my my grandmother and my my mom
both had Singer sewing machines. In fact, that there's the
both of them still exist. And my parents it's as
it's like a little uh table that's next to the
front door of their house. But it's an old singer

(33:25):
sewing machine that that's operated by by pedal. Uh So, yeah,
it's it's the one of those names that I think
most people associate it with sewing pretty quick. Yeah, yeah,
because I mean it's still a name. So yep, they're
still making. You don't hear about a lot of how
machines these days, but the singers still going. So now
we're to the argument phase. It's time for us to

(33:45):
take another quick break, but we'll be back with more
about the sewing machine in just a moment. We finally
reached the point now where things have come to ahead.
We've got the the snippy little patent applications out of
the way. Now it's time to really get down to

(34:07):
fisticuffs legally speaking. And uh it's the eighteen fifties where
we get that first enormous patent war. And it all
has to do with the fact that these different little
elements that have been improved upon over time, there were
a lot of arguments about who actually had ownership of
those ideas and in what implementations and who was owed

(34:32):
money by whom, and it got ugly, really really ugly.
So there was a a man by the name of
Allen B. Wilson, and he in eighteen fifty was working
on this lock stitch machine very similar to the modern machine,
and his mechanism could also go forward and backwards, which
we had not encountered before. Uh. And he applied for

(34:52):
his patent. He had made a second prototype model, and
the people that owned the brand shop patent from eight
got wind of this, and we're like, hold on a minute.
For four Uh, we owned some of the concepts you're using.
The double pointed shuttle that made up a part of
his machine was something that was part of their patent, uh,
they claimed, And that claim was not accurate. It was

(35:14):
complete bunk. So however, they think, well, let's throw a
wrench into this one. However, they had dollars and Wilson didn't,
so he could not fight them. So we get down
to using the old idea of well, if if we can't,
if we can't suppress this idea, one way, we can
just kind of run them out because we've got we've

(35:34):
got a larger reserve of cash. Yes, so, uh, he
had to give up half of his claim to a
P Kline and Edward Lee, who at that point held
the Bradshaw patent, and that was in late November, and
then after a little while he just sold them the
rest of his interest. He didn't want to mess with
it anymore. He retained very limited rights. That's a very

(35:57):
sad story there, where essentially he was beaten down. Yeah,
he really had the goods in terms of his invention
to have been the singer of this story in terms
of name recognition, but because he just didn't have the
means to fight anybody that made a claim against him
and vanished into history and to repsalt into the wound,
they would use his name in official advertisements. Yeah, people

(36:19):
recognize that he had invented something really pretty exciting because
it could do these things that previous machines couldn't, And
so their advertisements went a by Wilson's sewing Machine, the
best and only practical sewing machine not larger than a
lady's workbox, for the trifling sum of thirty five dollars.
So not only does he not get the benefit of

(36:41):
actually owning this device that he invented, he then has
the indignity of having his name used in the advertising
while this other company makes money off of it. Yeah,
he really did get shafted. So meanwhile, we've got to
lie as How who He's no dummy, No, he's witnessing
this and realizing some stuff is going down. Maybe I
need to maybe I need to kind of circle my

(37:03):
little my proverbial wagons here. So he decides that he's
going to protect the rights to royalties from his inventions. Uh,
and anything that could trace elements of the products being
sold back to one of his patents, right, Yeah, and
from the Branshaw model on. They really were working on
How's machine and kind of making twee tweaks to that. Uh.

(37:27):
And then he really got angry because he saw Isaac Singers,
one of Isaac Singer's sons, demonstrating their sewing machine. Yeah,
and uh he said, huh, some of these elements look
awfully familiar. So of course he ends up doing the
responsible thing, you know. He contacts Singer and says, um, actually,

(37:48):
I own the patent for this, this machinery, this particular
piece that you're using, and uh so by law, um,
I should really receive a royalty payment because you're you're
using it in you or device and otherwise not not
compensating me for it, and so um, I'd really like
that two thousand dollars you owe me, and Singer, being

(38:09):
the very level headed professional businessman, uh, decided to um
physically threatened How. Yeah. He Singer was known for having
a really bad temper. He did some really seedy things
just in business outside of this, and when it came
to this, there was one incident where he allegedly threatened
and nearly threw how down the steps outside his office.

(38:33):
Like there were fisticuffs. It wasn't just yelling and through lawyers,
they were physically I get the feeling that Singer is
very much like the character from from Parts of the
Caribbean who just says, you know, they're more like guidelines.
It's he's he's not not really one to necessarily be

(38:53):
too concerned with the actual rules of law. You know,
that actor that plays Jackmi Gibb would make a great
Isaac Singer, he would, But How did a super smart thing.
This is where we really realized that this man was
just really smart and very widely so. He like some
of these previous sad stories. Really didn't have a lot

(39:14):
of money to get into a lot of legal battles,
but he figures out a way to finance some litigation.
He sells half of his interest in his patent to
a man named George Bliss, and Bliss manufactured machines. He
built them as being House patent, even though they were
pretty different from House initial design. But the money that
how made off of this partnership was basically put into

(39:37):
his litigation machine and he just started fighting people. Oh
got you. So, so what he was doing was he
had made this partnership. He was making money off the partnership.
Bliss is making money because of Howe's name. How is
making money because of the partnership with Bliss. He ends
up spending that money directly on lawyers to attack people
who are actually infringing upon his patents. Yeah, he went

(39:58):
after Singer with great vigor. But there we're a lot
of other people that were also in this mix. Uh,
two of them Laroux and Blodgett. That we're a pair,
that we're making a firm, that we're making machines that
he thought infringed. There was actually a judgment in that
case in House favor that was the first one to
be settled, and once it it was like the first

(40:18):
of the dominoes, because then everybody else kind of panicked.
He went, oh, wow, he really has a case. Right.
When you've got a precedent set like that, then the
it becomes clear that's going to get harder and harder
to win a case. Uh. You know when a defense
against such a claim, If the claim has already been
held up in court in one instance, then the fear
is that it will be the same in future ones.

(40:38):
And it's cheaper to settle it is to go through
the process and then maybe have to be forced to
to hand over a larger reward in a court decision. Yeah,
and how was basically happy to any settlements, be like, okay,
let's set up a license. Like he was willing to
deal with them. It wasn't like he wanted to prevent
other people from making their machine. This is very different

(41:01):
from we see today when we were talking about similarities.
But today we got a lot of what we call
them patentrols. These are the folks who will get a
patent and then either they don't make anything on their own,
or they make something very very tiny, and then they
just kind of sit around and wait for folks to
infringe upon them. They threatened litigation in hopes of a settlement. Um.

(41:22):
But but what a lot of people have said about
the recent patent wars is that the patent system needs
to create an incentive for patent holders to license their
ideas for royalties, which is exactly what hal was doing
back in this day. Yeah. I mean he really saw
the benefit of like, hey, it would be a pain,
and that took us for me to set up my

(41:42):
own manufacturing plant and be churning these out. But all
these people are already set up. I can just cut
deals with them. Everybody wins. Yeah, except not so much. No, No,
I got I got ugly again. Apparently Singer was not done. Yeah,
he didn't settle, and so that case dragged on. Yeah,
and it got ugly in public. To write, you got

(42:03):
this great little story about to to advertisements that ran
on the same page of the New York Daily Tribune
that tell very different stories. Yeah, the first one reads
the sewing machine. It has been recently decided by the
United States Court that Elias how Jr. Of Number three
zero five Broadway was the originator of the sewing machine

(42:25):
now extensively used. Call at his office and see forty
of them in constant use upon cloth, leather, etcetera, and
judge for yourselves as to their practicality. Also see a
certified copy from the records of the United States Court
of the injunction against Singers machine so called, which is conclusive.
You that want sewing machines, be cautious how you purchased

(42:46):
them of others than him or those licensed under him.
Else the law will compel you to pay twice over. Meanwhile,
we have the other advertisement sewing machines. For the last
two years, Alias how Junior of Massachusetts, has been threatening
suits and injunctions against all the world who make, use
or sells sewing machines. We have sold many machines, are

(43:09):
selling them rapidly, and have good right to sell them.
The public do not acknowledge Mr Howe's pretensions, and for
the best reasons. One machines made according to House patent
are of no practical use. He tried several years without
being able to introduce one too. It is notorious, especially
in New York, that how was not the original inventor

(43:32):
of the machine combining the needle and shuttle and that
his claim to that is not valid. Finally, we make
and sell the best sewing machines. So yeah, there's um,
there's some vitriolic I love how It's it's like a
sewing machine telenovelo. There's a lot of soap opera going

(43:53):
on here. And to make it even more soap opera ish,
How went after Singer for libel. But he also went
after the New York Daily Tribune for printing his advertisement
in the first place. So we now have How going
after Singer both for patent infringement and reliabel. Yeah, fantastic,
just to make their relationship that much more delightful and huggy.

(44:14):
So at this point Singer, Singer wakes up and just says,
you know, you know you were right. I was wrong.
I'm I'm gonna be the bigger man walk away right,
not even a little. He instead just kind of goes
into a rage suitable to be played only by Daniel
day Lewis. Decides he's going to destroy How so this
is butcher Bill totally totally. He decides he is going

(44:38):
to seek out every scrap of evidence on earth. He
even sought out sources in Europe and China, to prove
that house design was not original. Uh. And the key
here is that the wording in house patent was really
his protection because he had patented the combination of the

(44:58):
shuttle and the one I and the I pointed needle
and how they would work together. But he never claimed
to have invented either of those elements, and so his
patent remained accurate and correct and not infringing on anyone
else because he didn't say I invented the needle invent
at the shuttle. He said I invented this combination of
these two elements that work in this particular way. Correct,

(45:19):
and that is completely valid patent law. So again, if
you come up with a new way to use existing
technology that you you can claim as an improvement over others,
there's nothing stopping you from getting a patent on that. Yeah,
you can patent an interaction of things. They don't have
to be physical things necessarily. Uh. However, if you remember

(45:40):
back when we talked about Walter Hunt, who was the
guy who invented a pretty workable sewing machine but then
kind of sold it off and abandoned it, he never
he never patented his particular idea. Singer found him of course,
because he thought that was his best shot at bringing
How down and showing that How is not, in fact
the first person to invent a working so machine. So

(46:01):
he I guess he just wanted to retroactively magically get
a precursor patent that couldn't have existed because William Hunt
never patented his detention. That is exactly what he tried
to do. So this this reminds me. I mean, there
there are entire books written about some of the more
ridiculous things that have happened in patent law around the world,

(46:24):
but particularly in the United States. So another good example
of some shenanigans that went on with patents involves Tesla
and Radio because Tesla was awarded the patent the United
States UH the same year that Marconi actually filed for
a patent. In fact, he received the patent a month
before or two months before Marconi had filed for a

(46:46):
patent in the US, and then famously, several years later
the Patent office awarded they went back on their decision,
took the patent away from Tesla and awarded it to Marconi.
So even though that happens later, you know this this
the events we're talking about here are earlier in the timeline.

(47:07):
It's not unusual for us to see these kind of
crazy political dealings. Yeah, and again remember, uh, you know,
this wasn't a time when everything was duplicated and there
was a trail of what had happened, when it would
be easy to fudge things. So it's it's reasonable that
Singer could think that he was going to finagle something
out of this. So what what happens due to this

(47:28):
this claim? Well, first Singer hires an engineer, William Whiting, uh,
to basically help resurrect Hunt's designs. He's gonna go back
to those original blueprints and schematics and he's going to
build it to prove that this one works and it's
great and how you got nothing? Uh? And uh, this

(47:50):
Scientific American at the time, as this was all bubbling up,
actually published a pretty uh scathing article about Hunt, a
sting because he was like, oh, yeah, I did invent
the sewing machine. Now that he sees that there's money
in it, and this is a litigious thing. They basically
said that his claims were rusty, he didn't he had
no hat in this game, Like what was he trying

(48:11):
to do? And no legal basis really, but there was
a trial with the Patent Office. There were hundreds of
pages of testimony. I mean it went on forever. Singer
dragged everybody in that he could think of that had
ever touched anything that vaguely resembled a sewing machine. UM
Patent Commissioner Charles Mason, though, ruled in favor of Elias
Howe on eighteen fifty four. And the big part of

(48:35):
Hunt's loss, even though he really did have a pretty
good working machine, was that he didn't do anything to
patent it or protected eighteen years prior. So, uh, the
Patent Office can't can't rule in favor of someone who
hasn't actually gone through the process. Yeah. Yeah, The commissioners like,
what are you trying to do? You didn't you don't
have these rights. Hunt did try to appeal to the

(48:55):
Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, but that did
not go so well either. Mason's ruling was upheld. So
then how emboldened by this victory, decides to start going
after other people that he has has perceived as infringing
against his patents. Yep, everybody that was selling a Singer

(49:16):
machine he went after. Wow, that was a lot of people. Yeah,
and he asked for preliminary injunctions against all of them
to shut down sales while they went through their court cases.
So he goes through this process, bringing it all the
way to courts when necessary. Um, and the they what

(49:38):
happened the poor singer at this point, not not really
poor singer because he's kind of a jerk. But but
you've got you've got how going after the people who
are selling singer sewing machines or incorporating them. Then what
they're doing instead, you know, they get attacked by how
they turned around. They attack singers saying, you got us
into this. Yeah, you had no right to sell us
the licenses that you sold us because you didn't have

(49:59):
a right to it. Didn't own the technology that you
were licensing to us. And and that's why we're in trouble. Yea.
So it's so litigious. By eighteen fifty four, keep in
mind this started in the eighteen fifty By eighteen fifty four,
Singer and how settle their lawsuit and it's announced in
Scientific American. This is a big deal. This is not

(50:22):
tiny news. This is like this is just like when
you go on to Google news and you see like
Samsung and Apple settle lawsuit. That's that's equivalent. Yeah, it's
kind of like it reminds me of when those first
like headlines were happening about no Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates actually like each other. It's fine, and it's like
that level of wait, what we didn't think that's how

(50:42):
this worked, except there was very little pushing down of
stairs in any of them. Right, well, what what's really
cool about this? Okay, so this didn't end all litigation.
There was still some continuing. But by eighteen fifty six
we get the president of Grover and Baker, which was
one of the companies involved in the suits, that were, uh,

(51:04):
that we're involving Elias How, I feel like we should
back up because we skipped that. People tried to then
sue how for improving Uh yeah, so How Basically at
this point was the you know, the czar of the
sewing machine in industry. He owned the patent to the
biggest chunk of it and was licensing those out, and
he thought, well, you know, I could really tweak that

(51:25):
original design as well. But every tweak he made other
people claim they had already made. So then he was
getting sued by people for patent infringement for improving on
his original design. Okay, so that's a litigation festival. Basically.
Now you've got people saying, all right, well, these improvements
you're making, we've already made and we've already patented. So

(51:46):
it's become a huge mess. By eighteen fifty six, you
get the president of Grover and Baker, which was one
of the companies that was involved in these cases against
how about these improvements to the original designs and comes
up with a concept up called the combination, which, by
the way, these days we would call this a patent pool. Yeah,

(52:07):
and a patent pool is essentially when you get a
whole bunch of different stakeholders who all own different patents
that are involved in the same general technology to essentially
come to an agreement saying, all right, we're gonna pull
all these patents together, and as long as we are
all officially part of this group and we all agree
to operate by these rules, we're not going to sue
the pants off each other. Whenever we make an improvement

(52:30):
to that technology or incorporate that technology into our products.
Make suring that everyone's getting the royalties that they deserve exactly.
So the president of Grover and Baker was Orlando B. Potter,
and he, you know, I feel like he's a person
that's not very well known historically, but he really deserves
a lot of kudos because he was really the first
person to go, hey, you guys, we're only hurting ourselves.

(52:53):
We're kind of being idiots. And he really established this
concept of what is now a patent pool. Uh. He
was like, let's stop, you know, holding up everybody's production.
Let's stop throwing our money at lawyers. We don't need that.
We can work this out. Uh. And so he got
them all to join their forces. They pulled their patents.
They made one unified combination patent for sewing machines. How

(53:17):
initially was not on board with this. Well, now, when
you own a huge chunk of the landscape, then you
feel like you have the most to lose that kind
of agreement. He definitely felt that way, but eventually he
did agree to it. He had made some pretty heavy
stipulations and the other parties agreed. Basically, he was going
to get a five dollar royalty on every sewing machine

(53:38):
that was sold in the US, and for every sewing
machine that was exported, he would get a dollar. Now,
I remember this is in eighteen fifty six, so these
are not paltry sums. No, this is this is significant money.
So in the next eleven years between eighteen fifty six,
in eighteen sixty seven, when How's Patton expired, he made
more than two million dollars. And that's two million dollars
in eight hundreds of money. Yeah, that's way more. But

(54:03):
he would be a kajillionaire. Crazy crazy, I think that
was accurate estimation there um. And he requested a an
extension to that patent, but was denied. Patents do, like
I said earlier, expire, and when they expire, you lose
that exclusivity. You cannot demand licenses for it. That technology,

(54:25):
that implementation of that technology then belongs to the public,
so anyone can create any kind of device using that
sort of approach um that was originally covered by that
patent that's now expired. So he doesn't get the extension
he wanted, and he dies of a broken heart. He
doesn't really die of a broken heart. His heart was
broken earlier in his life when his wife died, but

(54:46):
it did not kill him. To the best of our knowledge, However,
some say that it did kind of spur his ft
because he just needed to focus on something else. Um.
But Singer of course continue to work his magic in
the sewing machine industry. And now as a consequence, you know,

(55:07):
he's really the name we remember more than Alliance. How yeah, yeah,
you see that name all over. The was exceptional at marketing,
very much again, kind of like Edison, who was brilliant
in many ways, and one of the big ones was
that he was a very smart businessman and marketer. So yeah,
this is again you can see the parallels with modern

(55:28):
patent wars. Everything from the cooperation of various companies to
make sure that business can continue, the arguments that patent
litigation harms innovation, that that pat that's sitting on patents
harms innovation. These are not new ideas. No, you gotta
look at you know, early to mid nineteenth century and

(55:48):
you can see it all there as well. So very
interesting that there's so much in common with what we
see today. That wraps up this classic episode about the
sewing machine. I hope you and joined it. If you
have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
of tech Stuff, reach out to me. On Twitter, the
handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W

(56:09):
and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
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