Howe, Elias

SUBJECT AREA: Domestic appliances and interiors, Textiles

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b. 9 July 1819 Spencer, Massachusetts, USA

d. 3 October 1867 Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA

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American inventor of one of the earliest successful sewing machines.

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Son of Elias Howe, a farmer, he acquired his mechanical knowledge in his father's mill. He left school at 12 years of age and was apprenticed for two years in a machine shop in Lowell, Massachusetts, and later to an instrument maker, Ari Davis in Boston, Massachusetts, where his master's services were much in demand by Harvard University. Fired by a desire to invent a sewing machine, he utilized the experience gained in Lowell to devise a shuttle carrying a lower thread and a needle carrying an upper thread to make lock-stitch in straight lines. His attempts were so rewarding that he left his job and was sustained first by his father and then by a partner. By 1845 he had built a machine that worked at 250 stitches per minute, and the following year he patented an improved machine. The invention of the sewing machine had an enormous impact on the textile industry, stimulating demand for cloth because making up garments became so much quicker. The sewing machine was one of the first mass-produced consumer durables and was essentially an American invention. William Thomas, a London manufacturer of shoes, umbrellas and corsets, secured the British rights and persuaded Howe to come to England to apply it to the making of shoes. This Howe did, but he quarrelled with Thomas after less than one year. He returned to America to face with his partner, G.W.Bliss, a bigger fight over his patent (see I.M. Singer), which was being widely infringed. Not until 1854 was the case settled in his favour. This litigation threatened the very existence of the new industry, but the Great Sewing Machine Combination, the first important patent-pooling arrangement in American history, changed all this. For a fee of $5 on every domestically-sold machine and $1 on every exported one, Howe contributed to the pool his patent of 1846 for a grooved eye-pointed needle used in conjunction with a lock-stitch-forming shuttle. Howe's patent was renewed in 1861; he organized and equipped a regiment during the Civil War with the royalties. When the war ended he founded the Howe Machine Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

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Further Reading

Obituary, 1867, Engineer 24.

Obituary, 1867, Practical Magazine 5.

F.G.Harrison, 1892–3, Biographical Sketches of Pre-eminent Americans (provides a good account of Howe's life and achievements).

N.Salmon, 1863, History of the Sewing Machine from the Year 1750, with a biography of Elias Howe, London (tells the history of sewing machines).

F.B.Jewell, 1975, Veteran Sewing Machines, A Collector's Guide, Newton Abbot (a more modern account of the history of sewing machines).

C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. V, Oxford: Clarendon Press (covers the mechanical developments).

D.A.Hounshell, 1984, From the American System to Mass Production 1800–1932. The

Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States, Baltimore (examines the role of the American sewing machine companies in the development of mass-production techniques).

RLH