Singer
ACHIEVEMENT(S): The foremost manufacturer of early sewing machines.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 27th October 1811, in Schachticoke, NY.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 23rd July 1875, in Torquay, England. Aged 63.
DISCIPLINE: Engineer.
FIELD: Engineering.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Adam Singer and Ruth Benson.
SIBLINGS:
SPOUSE: Catherine Maria Haley, divorced 1860. Isabella Boyer, married 1863.
CHILDREN: Twenty-four, including legitimate and illegitimate children.
EDUCATION: Little formal schooling.
MAJOR WORK: Designed, parallel with Howe, the first practical sewing machine.
LIFE AND TIMES:
Singer started his working life as a mechanic but, in his late teens, took up professional acting. For nineteen years he travelled, working as an actor or on any job he could find that was connected with the theatre. In spite of his good looks, he wasn’t much of a theatrical success. In 1839, between theatrical jobs, while working for his brother, a contractor on the Illinois Canal, he invented a rock-drilling machine which was powered by horses circling inside a wooden frame, turning a crank which raised the drill to the same height at each successive stroke.
Singer made $2,000 when he sold the patent, and he used the money to set up his own theatre company. After touring with his group, which included his mistress and their four children, the company failed in 1844. Two years later, he set up a company in Pittsburgh, which made wooden type and raised-sign lettering. During the next three years, he designed his own machine for type-cutting, patenting it in 1849. He took his invention to New York to look for funding to improve and market it, and met a publisher, George Zieber, who raised the finance to set up production in Boston. They rented space in the basement of a steam-powered machine shop owned by Orson Phelps, who ran a business manufacturing sewing machines. Singer’s type-cutting machine was well designed, but he and Zieber could find no buyers over the course of the next several months.
Phelps, meanwhile, was having problems with the sewing machines he was producing and asked Singer to try to improve the design. Singer persuaded Zieber to invest more money and the three men drew up a contract to redevelop the sewing machine. After working day and night for eleven days, Singer had perfected the sewing machine* and patented it under his own name.
The three men set up a company called I M Singer & Company and by November 1851, the new machine was on sale at the high price of $125.
Elias Howe*, who had invented the first commercial sewing machine in 1846, sued Singer, claiming that his idea of the lock-stitch had been stolen. The basic mechanism of Singer’s machine was the same as Howe’s, but the method of forming the stitch was different. As the handle turned, the needle paused at a certain point in its stroke, so that the shuttle could pass through the loop formed in the cotton. When the needle continued, the threads were tightened to make the stitch.
Howe won his case for patent infringement but, by this time, Singer was already in successful production. To deal with patent litigation, Singer called in a lawyer, Edward Clark. Clark came up with an arrangement for royalty sharing which allowed the sewing machine war to end in 1856. Clark also thought of the marketing ploy of payment by installments, as well as the money-back guarantee.
By 1860, the Singer Company was the largest sewing machine manufacturer in the world and, in 1863, Singer formed the Singer Manufacturing Company, then retired. He moved to Europe in 1867, to enjoy the life of a gentleman on a country estate near Torquay, in the south of England.
Singer always found it difficult to settle anywhere for long, or to maintain friendships and associations. He could sometimes be violent and his love life was colorful even by the standards of the nineteenth century. He married twice and had children by both marriages. In addition he had three further families with three other partners. One of his daughters became the Princesse de Polignac (Proust, Debussy)*. After suffering from a heart complaint, Singer died in England.
ASSESSMENT: Singer’s success story represented the quintessential fulfilment of the promise of the American Dream.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Singer sailed on the first Atlantic crossing by Great Eastern* in 1860.
He advanced Eli Whitney*’s idea of interchangeability of machine parts.
His grandson Paris married dancer Isadora Duncan*
ONELINER: Isaac M Singer, sewing-machine manufacturer
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Brandon, Ruth, Singer and the Sewing Machine: a Capitalist Romance, Barrie & Jenkins, London, 1977.