Elias Howe

American inventor

• Born: July 9, 1819
• Birthplace: Spencer, Massachusetts
• Died: October 3, 1867
• Place of death: Brooklyn, New York

In addition to being the first American inventor to build a workable sewing machine and have it successfully patented, Howe combined with other sewing machine manufacturers to minimize lawsuits and maximize profits by sharing patents for fees to avoid mutually destructive competition.

Early Life

Elias Howe, Jr., was one of eight children born to a poor farmer, Elias Howe, Sr., and his wife, Polly Bemis Howe. Among the Howe family, two of Howe’s father’s brothers were inventors. Elias, Sr., himself ran a gristmill and cut lumber, in addition to farming, to support his family. When Elias, Jr., was six, he worked along with his brothers and sisters sewing wires on cards by hand at home. This piecework, for a local cotton mill, brought in some extra money to help the family. His other work as a boy included repairs to his parents’ farmhouse. He showed great patience and determination in his painstaking tasks, often repairing the farm machinery—work he enjoyed. The young boy’s life, however, was not all work. Regarded as easygoing and companionable, he had several good friends. He attended school during the winter but spent the other seasons at work on the farm.

By the time Howe was twelve, his father realized that he could no longer feed and clothe him, so he was hired out to work on a neighbor’s farm. This arrangement lasted for about one year but had to end when Howe’s frailties interfered with his heavy chores. The youngster had been born small and frail, and he never had the endurance and strength necessary for hard labor, a fact with which he had to contend all of his life. He was also congenitally lame.

In 1835, Howe moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he found work repairing cotton-mill machinery. Although he was still a young man, he was admired for his advanced skill with machinery. However, the economic panic in 1837 forced the cotton mills in Lowell to close, and young Howe lost his job.

Howe next moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he roomed with a cousin and worked as a foreman for a hemp-carding company; this job was boring and fatiguing, so Howe stayed for only part of a year. His next position was a fortunate one for him. He worked as a repairman for Ari Davis of Boston, a skilled watchmaker, who also made precision instruments for seamen and for the scientists at Harvard University. Davis’s shop attracted many inventors, and it was here that Howe got the idea to invent a sewing machine. One day in 1839, he heard the loud-voiced Davis tell a customer who was struggling to invent a knitting machine that the invention of a sewing machine would make a man rich.

On March 3, 1841, Howe married Elizabeth J. Ames of Boston. In a few years, the couple had three children to support. To help her husband, Mrs. Howe did hand-sewing for her neighbors. Many evenings, Howe watched her sew, pondering how a sewing machine would work. In part from his fascination with machinery and in part from his desire to escape poverty and support his family, Howe became obsessed with the idea of inventing a sewing machine.

Life’s Work

Howe quit his job at Davis’s shop and moved into the attic of Elias Howe, Sr.’s house—now in Cambridge. There in 1843, working diligently, Howe was beginning to put together his first version of a sewing machine when a fire destroyed the house. A friend, George Fisher, took an interest in Howe’s invention and generously funded him five hundred dollars for the equipment he needed; Fisher also boarded the Howes in his home.

From 1844 to 1845 (especially during the winter months), Howe worked at a feverish pace to complete a functioning sewing machine. He used no blueprints or sketches but worked from a mental design; he also used the trial-and-error method of putting his ideas into moving parts, often discarding pieces of the machine that had not worked to his satisfaction. One of his most serious challenges was the designing of the proper needle for his sewing machine; needles with holes at the head (as women use in hand sewing) did not work on the machine. Finally, Howe had a dream in which men were threatening to kill him with spears; he noticed that all the spears had holes near their points—this was his solution. Howe’s machine sewed perfectly when he used such needles.

By April of 1845, Howe and his business partner Fisher had a machine that they could present to the public. A demonstration was held at the Quincy Hall Clothing Manufactory, where Howe, operating his machine, sewed at least five times faster than the best women hand-sewers. The stitching produced by Howe’s machine was also neater and stronger than that done by hand.

Howe’s sewing machine did not impress Boston’s clothiers as a useful item for them to purchase. A few factors affected the marketing of Howe’s invention to American industry. First, it was expensive—about three hundred dollars. Second, the hand-sewers would have to be retrained to work by machine, and their employers feared that they would refuse (the workers knew that the sewing machines would soon take most of their jobs). Finally, the clothiers already had cheap labor in their women workers, so they saw no need to buy machinery to do the sewing. Howe was also at a disadvantage in that the United States did not yet have a strong communication network. If news of his machine had reached major clothing firms in were chosen, he may have found buyers for his invention.

When Howe realized that there were no eager buyers for his machine in the United States, he sent his brother Amasa Howe to London, England, to try to market it there. The British industries were more organized than the American ones at this time and were also more acquainted with manufacture by machine. In October of 1846, Amasa Howe sold his brother’s sewing machine to William Thomas of London for 250 pounds in British money. Thomas was a maker of corsets, shoes, and umbrellas, and he was also a dishonest man. He obtained a British patent for the Howe machine in his own name, rather than in Howe’s as he had promised. Thomas also made a verbal agreement with Amasa to pay Elias a royalty on each sewing machine Thomas sold—an agreement that he ignored.

Howe’s profits from the first sale of his invention quickly went to pay his debts. He found himself in poverty again and so accepted an offer from Thomas (still seemingly a fair man) to move to London and build for him a stronger sewing machine (presumably to sew leather for shoes). Howe and his family moved to a poor section of London, and he worked for Thomas for fifteen dollars a week. At the end of eight months, Howe had created the desired machine, and Thomas, not too graciously, ordered Howe to work as a repairman in his factory. Howe felt insulted and left.

The year 1848 was an especially difficult one for Howe. First, he had to be separated from his family. Unable to support them, he sent them home to the United States, while he remained in England to build another sewing machine with the financial help of Charles Inglis, a relatively poor man himself. When this machine was finished, Howe sold it cheaply and also pawned his American patent papers on his first sewing machine (along with a working model), in order to buy passage back to the United States.

Howe landed in New York, where he found employment as a mechanic at a good wage, but he had held this job for only a few weeks when tragedy struck. His wife, having battled consumption for two years, was dying. Elias Howe, Sr., sent his son money to travel home to see Elizabeth before she died; his brother-in-law loaned him a suit to wear to her funeral. Howe also learned that the few household goods he owned had been lost in a shipwreck on their passage from England. His father and neighbors helped him through this crisis, taking care of his children.

Ironically, at about this time, Howe learned of several American copies of his sewing machine, produced with total disregard to his U.S. patent. However, Howe remained persistent, patenting his first sewing machine on September 10, 1846, even though he had to mortgage his father’s farm for the money that he needed to travel to Washington, D.C., to receive that patent.

Howe’s legal patent made a considerable difference in the outcome of his life’s work. He now elicited the aid of George Bliss, who had bought the 50-percent business interest in Howe’s invention from George Fisher. Bliss and Howe employed the lawyers necessary to wage long court suits against the makers of American sewing machines. Howe wished to win a royalty from these manufacturers for each sewing machine they had sold in the United States; as the patented inventor of the machine, he had this right.

One of Howe’s opponents in court proved to be a determined man himself. Isaac M. Singer, wishing to retain the fortune he was making from selling Singer sewing machines, hired help to refute Howe’s claim that he was the rightful inventor. Singer located Walter Hunt of New York State, who had built a model of a sewing machine earlier than had Howe. Singer lost his case, however, when it was shown in court that Hunt’s rebuilt machine did not work and that Hunt had never patented it.

Howe, after battling in court from 1849 to 1854, was victorious and, instantly, a rich man. All of his American competitors who were manufacturing and selling machines had to pay royalties to him. Soon, his income was about four thousand dollars a week. However, Howe was a generous man, sharing his new wealth with the friends and relatives who had helped him in his years of struggle. His one deep regret was that his wife had died before he gained his fortune. The humorous and fun-loving aspects of Howe’s personality had left him at her tragic death.

Howe was, however, left with his dedication, which he used to good advantage in his remaining years. In 1865, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he built a large, modern plant for the manufacture of sewing machines (later managed by his brother Amasa). Howe became a prominent and respected citizen of Bridgeport. When he volunteered to serve as a private in the Union Army during the Civil War (despite his age and infirmities) many young Bridgeport men were moved by his example and volunteered as well. Howe generously outfitted the entire Connecticut Seventeenth Regiment Volunteers, which he helped to organize; he even provided horses for the officers and paid the men when their army wages were delayed. Howe served in a Union Army camp near Baltimore, Maryland, but was forced to leave when his chronic frailty made it impossible for him to continue his duties as the camp’s postmaster.

While visiting at his daughter’s home in Brooklyn, New York, in 1867, Howe contracted Bright’s disease; he never recovered and died October 3, 1867. The large factory he had built in Bridgeport, Connecticut, passed on to his son, who managed it until a fire leveled it on July 26, 1883. In the following year, the city of Bridgeport, in gratitude, erected a statue of Elias Howe, Jr., in its Seaside Park. He stands, hat in one hand and cane in the other, overlooking Long Island Sound. His face is large and solid, with a prominent nose, soft eyes, and firmly set lips—the face of a determined Yankee inventor.

Significance

With his invention of the sewing machine, Howe made a contribution to American industry that profoundly affected Americans’ lives. The hand-sewn garments that women laboriously made for their families were replaced by mass-produced clothing that sold at affordable prices. Howe’s invention also moved the making of many clothing items, including shoes, out of cottage industries and tailor shops and into manufacturing plants. The sewing machine became a reasonably priced, convenient piece of equipment that was also found in a large number of homes; there sewing became a creative task, rather than a painstaking necessity.

Howe also played an important role in another area of American industrial development. He, along with several successful sewing machine manufacturers, held a conference in Albany, New York, in 1856, with the purpose of avoiding further lawsuits. These manufacturers, known as the Combination, became the first American industrial group to form a patent pool; they shared one another’s machine designs and improvements for a reasonable fee, rather than remaining rivals.

Howe’s inventiveness, perseverance, and mechanical skill won for him many well-deserved honors in foreign nations, including a gold medal at the famed Paris Exhibition of 1867. His genius and Yankee know-how gained for this once poverty-stricken American the acclaim of a grateful nation and a grateful world.

Bibliography

Burlingame, Roger. March of the Iron Men: A Social History of Union Through Invention. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938. A fascinating book, well researched and well organized. As an interpreter of social history, Burlingame has strong opinions, which he defends admirably. Outstanding bibliography, chronology chart, and illustrations. Good at showing inventors’ motives, including Howe’s.

Chamberlain, John. The Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. Originally a series in Fortune magazine on famous American businesspeople. Includes an extensive and helpful bibliography. Emphasis is on the wit and ingenuity of some Yankee inventors, including Howe. A lively and engaging style throughout. A good book for the high school student.

Gies, Joseph, and Frances Gies. The Ingenious Yankees. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976. The authors focus on how Yankee inventors helped transform an agricultural country into a powerful technological nation. Offers clarity of exposition in an interesting narrative format. A biographical sketch of Howe is included, as well as an extensive bibliography.

Iles, George. Leading American Inventors. New York: Henry Holt, 1912. Iles offers a careful analysis of Howe’s personality, focusing on the characteristics that caused Howe’s success. Iles brings his subject to life for the reader. Some of the details of Howe’s life covered here are not found elsewhere; a portrait of him is included.

Poole, Lynn, and Gray Poole. Men Who Pioneered Inventions. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969. A book suitable for a young person, from the Makers of Our Modern World series. Less factual information in its chapter on Howe than in the other books listed here. The Pooles describe how the sewing machine affected American life.

Thompson, Holland. The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1921. One volume in a series devoted to American life, history, and progress. It has an ample bibliography, as well as photographs and illustrations. Vivid descriptive passages of Howe at work (slightly fictionalized) are provided in a narrative account of his life and work. Also details the mechanics of Howe’s sewing machine.

Wilson, Mitchell. American Science and Invention: A Pictorial History. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954. A large volume that relies on period illustrations and photographs to describe the course of American invention. Concise and accurate on Howe’s life as well as his inventing. Good descriptions of how his machine operated. Also interesting on Howe’s character, including his mechanical skill.