Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/826

 800 SEWING MACHINE by a treadle instead of a crank as in Saint's machine, and was carried back by a spring. It Wad the form of a crochet hook, and being driven through the fabric caught a lower thread from a thread carrier and looper be- neath, and brought a loop which it laid upon the upper surface, and at the next passage brought up another and passed it over the loop previously made, thus making a double loop or chain stitch, with the loops on the upper side. The Thimonier machine which was patented in France Aug. 5, 1848, and in the United States Sept. 3, 1850, was an im- provement upon that of 1830, but retained its principal features, the needle being still worked by a treadle and spring. It is said that between 1832 and 1834 Walter Hunt of New York made a sewing machine in which he used an eye-pointed needle, attached to the end of a vibrating arm, which carried a thread through the fabric and made a loop which was pierced by a shuttle carrying another thread, making what is known as the lock stitch. When he applied for a patent in 1854 he was refused, because the main features which he claimed for his machine had been patented eight years previously by Elias Howe, and it was held that his right to a patent was for- feited by abandonment. A machine for ma- king a through-and-through or shoemaker's stitch was patented Feb. 21, 1842, by J. J. Greenough of Washington. The needle was pointed at both ends, with the eye in the middle, and was drawn through one way and then the other by a pair of pincers travelling on a track and opening and closing automati- cally. It was designed for sewing leather and other hard material, and an awl pierced the hole in advance of the needle. The leather was held between clamps, which by means of a rack could bo moved each way alternately to make a back stitch, or continuously forward to make the shoemaker's stitch. The needle was threaded with a length of thread, and re- quired refilling. The rack, after passing for- ward its length, was each time set back. An- other form of a through-and-throngh sewing machine employs fluted rollers, between which the cloth is drawn and crimped, and in this condition forced upon the needle and thence on the thread. In 1844 a patent was granted in England to Fisher and Gibbons for work- ing ornamental designs by machinery, in which two threads were looped together, one pass- ing through the fabric, the other looping with it on the surface without passing through. Curved needles were used beneath the fabric, and other needles with looped guides or re- tainers above, the several sets being arranged in a row across the machine. When the point of the curved needle ascended through the fab- ric, the point of the upper needle entered be- tween it and its thread, and when the curved needle descended it left upon the upper needle a loop which was then pressed further on by the guide. The fabric was moved according to the pattern required, when the curved needle again ascended and the upper needle passed its thread around it so as to be withdrawn through the loop previously on its stem. After this the upper needle, again advancing, entered be- tween the curved needle and its thread as before, producing a highly ornamental double chain stitch. Sewing machines may be divided into four classes, according to the character of the stitch they make: 1, those making the through, either continuous or back stitch ; 2, those making the lock stitch ; 3, those making a single-thread chain stitch, either the ordinary crochet stitch, or a twisted one called a twisted loop stitch; and 4, those making a double- thread loop or chain stitch. Thethrough-and- through stitching machines, being no longer in use, will not be further described. The inven- tion of the lock stitch has been claimed for Walter Hunt, but it has been generally con- ceded by sewing machine inventors that the machine of Elias Howe was independently de- vised ; and as it had a more perfected construc- tion and formed the basis upon which subse- quent improvements were made, fitting it for a practically working machine, and obtained the first patent, he has been generally accred- ited as the originator of the lock-stitch ma- chine. Howe's machine, as patented in 1846, used a grooved and curved eye-pointed nee- dle, carried upon the end of a vibrating arm, which passing through the cloth formed a loop through which a shuttle passed another thread. The needle moved in a horizontal direction, the cloth being held in a vortical po- sition by pins projecting from a baster plate, which was moved intermittingly by a toothed wheel. On reaching the end of the plate, the machine was stopped, the baster plate returned to its original position, and the cloth again at- tached. This construction prevented the suc- cessful use of the machine. One of its serious wants was a device by which the cloth could be moved along in such a way as not to inter- " fere with the functions of the needle, and this defect was then common to all sewing ma- chines. Such a device is called the "feed," and was sought for a long time before the desired end was accomplished. One of the first steps was to make the needle vibrate ver- tically, and move the fabric along, or feed it on a horizontal plate, by the action of a notched wheel which rotated with its upper edge just passing through a slot in the horizontal plate. An intermitting motion was given to this wheel, which was sought to be so timed as to alter- nate with the passage of the needle through the cloth ; but this arrangement was far from perfect, although it was for a time used with some success in the early machines made by Mr. I. M. Singer and others. It was not till the device known as the A. B. Wilson "four- motion feed " was introduced that this feature of the sewing machine approached perfec- tion. This device consists in moving a serra- ted bar, in a slot in the horizontal plate upon