Elias Howe

Elias Howe was born in 1819 in Massachusetts, the son of a farmer.  At the age of 20, he began to be interested in a knitting machine while working as an apprentice in Boston.  When he finally decided to work on a sewing machine years later, he had a wife and three children and made $9 a week. 

He tried and made many false starts until 1844 when Walter Hunt's idea of the eye-needle on a shuttle reminded him of a weaving loom.  A year later, he had perfected sewing a seam and in 1846 he received his patent.  To get the public to understand his idea, he went to the Quincy Hall Clothing Manufacturer and offered to demonstrate his invention.  It was a cynical audience, but after doing 250 stitches a minute for two weeks, heads turned. 

Unfortunately, even those demonstrations weren't enough to make people want to purchase his machine for several reasons.  First it cost $300.  Second, it didn't make the whole garment.  Third it would put tailors and seamstresses out of work.  So Howe went to London where his was successful in getting his machine into corset making business. 

Again, unfortunately, his fate didn't last in London either and he returned to New York where he found his machine on display as an exhibition - charging twelve and half cents to watch it demonstrated.  Others had taken his invention and made their own machines.  Howe was determined to protect his legal rights and recovered his original machine and patent papers from London. 

Howe tried to bargain licenses for a royalty fee, but ended up having to take his case to court.  That cost money and Howe had to mortgage his father's farm.  It was the industrial battles of the century and filled the papers with the daily activities.  The outcome?  We will return to that but there is another player that we need to look at first, Issac Singer.

Next time...Issac Singer
________________________
Today in Pioneer History:  "On June 20, 1875, Mountain Man Joe Meek dies at age 65 on his farm in Oregon.  A skilled practitioner of the frontier art of the tall tale, his life was nearly as adventurous as his stories claimed, having survived a hand to hand fight with a grizzly bear.  Meek was one of the early explorers and tamers of the West.