Isaac Singer's clever sewing machine - the U.S's first multinational company

Portrait of Singer 

by Edward Harrison May, 1869

Isaac Merritt Singer (1811-75) was the youngest child born in NY to German migrants. The parents divorced & abandoned the 8 children when Is­aac was only 12, so he left home with minimal education, took odd jobs at carnivals and formed a travelling troupe of repertory actors. After 9 years on tour, Singer ran out of money and the group had to disband.

He developed interests and skills in machines, theatre and women!

At 20 Singer started again, becoming an apprentice at an older bro­ther’s machine shop in Rochester, and in 1839 he patented a rock-drilling machine. 10 years later he patented a metal-and-wood carv­ing mach­ine. But mainly it was Singer who developed and brought into gen­er­al use the first practical domestic sewing-machine. He invented the first practical, commercially-successful sewing machine and the first multinational company.

While working in a Boston machine shop in 1851, Singer was asked to repair a Lerow and Blodgett Co sewing mach­ine. Inst­ead of repairing the machine, inventor Singer quickly redesigned it by in­stal­ling a presser-foot for feeding the fabric. Importantly, the new design caused less thread breakage with the innovation of an arm-like app­ar­atus that extended over the work-table, holding the needle at its end. It was an excellent replacement for hand-sewing, sewing 900 stitches a minute, a dramatic improvement over a skil­l­ed seamstress's rate of 40 stitches a minute on simple work.

  

An early sewing machine produced by the Singer Co.

Singer patented & sold the new sewing machine with his partner Edward Clark. Others had pat­ented sewing machines before Singer, of course eg the British inventor Thomas Saint had received the world's first patent for a sewing machine in 1790. And American Walter Hunt developed a machine in 1832 that made a lock stitch. But Singer’s successful machine was the first to embody features allowing contin­uous and curved stitching. His mach­ine used an overhanging arm hold­ing the needle bar over a horiz­ontal table, making it possible to sew on any part of the object. His basic design features have been followed in most subsequent machines.

Because Singer had copied a basic eye-pointed needle and the lock stitch developed by Elias Howe in his machine, Howe won a patent-infringement suit against him in 1854. The suit did not prevent Sin­ger from manufacturing his machine and by 1860, Singer and Clark’s comp­any had become the largest makers of sewing mach­ines in the U.S. Singer secured 12 additional patents for improve­ments!

While the first Singer machines were relatively expensive and bulky, the inventor soon adopted a mass-production system of interchange­able parts, and worked to reduce the machines in size and weight. From the start, he looked past the commercial market into house­holds, aiming to sell to housewives. As we will see, he knew about women’s needs!

After the refinements, Singer could sell his machines for $10 each, making them affordable symbols of status and self-reliance for average American families. Edward Clark pion­eer­ed instalment credit plans, allowing customers to pay in instalments for a mach­ine that would have been too expensive for most to afford in 1 payment. This had had a profound effect on soaring consumer sal­es. By the time tailor Ebenezer Butterick began selling dress patt­erns, the Singer had become America's most popular sewing mach­ine.

Singer began relationships with heaps of women, many of whom unknowingly overlapped in his life. By 1860, Isaac had fathered and acknowledged 18 mainly illeg­it­im­ate children, 16 of them still then living, by 4 women. In 1861, his long standing mistress Mary Ann Sponsler took him to court for abusing her & daughter. She began securing a financial claim to his assets by fil­ing documents detailing his infidelities!

Singer already had a large family with Mary Mc­Gonigall, an employee at his comp­any's American factory, when the two sailed together for London in 1862. In 1863 Singer & Clark formed the Sing­er Manufact­ur­ing Co. in Britain.

Only later did Singer sail to Paris, alone! In Pa­r­­is he met Isob­elle Summer­ville, married her in 1865, and stayed tog­ether for the rest of his life. The couple settled in Devon, bought an estate there and began to build a huge mansion a la Palace of Versailles.

IM Singer expanded into the European market, establishing a factory in Glasgow controlled by the parent company; it thus bec­am­e one of the first U.S-based multinational corporations with ag­encies in Paris and later in Rio de Janeiro. Thus we note that this, the first American multinational company, innovated and spread key elements in the sewing machine design around the world. They mark­et­ed it to house­holds, freeing millions of women from hand-sewing.

  

Singer's elaborate grave 

in Torquay Cemetery

Singer died in 1875 on his British land, leaving a vast est­ate. By 1890, 15 years after Is­aac's death, Singer machines accounted for 90% of the world's sewing machine sales, including my grandmother’s beloved machine in the 1930s.

You will enjoy the Smithsonian’s article on "How Singer Won the Sewing Machine War".