Elias Howe

Elias Howe

Elias Howe first heard the term sewing machine while working in Boston for Ari Davis, who made and repaired precision instruments.

People had been trying to invent such a device for half a century in America and abroad, without any great success. Some early devices patented in England simply did not work. A functional sewing machine, introduced by French tailor Barthelemy Thimonnier in 1830, roused tailors to radical action. Fearing that they would be put out of business by the laborsaving equipment, they stormed and destroyed Thimonnier's eighty machine plant. The inventor fled and later died a bankrupt.

In 1834, Walter Hunt, credited with creating a forerunner of the Winchester repeating rifle and the safety pin, built America's first sewing machine but lost interest in a device he saw as a destroyer of jobs.

But Ari Davis thought such a machine would make someone a fortune, and Howe took his employer's opinions to heart.

Sarah Townsend
Australia