Isaac Merrit Singer
Isaac Merrit Singer was an influential American inventor and businessman, best known for his significant improvements to the sewing machine, which helped revolutionize both commercial and domestic sewing in the 19th century. Born in 1811 in New York to a family of German immigrants, Singer faced a tumultuous childhood, leaving home at the age of twelve. He worked various jobs, including as a machinist, and eventually patented a rock-drilling machine in 1839. His breakthrough came in 1851 when he developed a practical design for a sewing machine, leading to the formation of I. M. Singer and Company.
Despite not being the original inventor of the sewing machine, Singer's enhancements made it more accessible and efficient, allowing it to be used widely by both tailors and housewives. His innovative marketing strategies, including installment payment plans, further broadened the machine's appeal. Throughout his life, Singer's personal relationships were complex, marked by multiple marriages and children. He faced legal challenges, notably accusations of bigamy, but continued to achieve business success until his death in 1875. Today, Singer is often regarded as a quintessential example of the self-made American entrepreneur.
Subject Terms
Isaac Merrit Singer
- Born: October 27, 1811
- Birthplace: Pittstown, New York
- Died: July 23, 1875
- Place of death: Torquay, Devon, England
American machinist
While Singer did not invent the sewing machine, he made improvements to the machine that made it more practical and adaptable for home use. He then, through clever marketing and the first installment payment plan, made a fortune selling his machines around the world.
Primary field: Manufacturing
Primary invention: Sewing machine improvements
Early Life
Isaac Merrit Singer was the youngest child of Adam Singer and Ruth Benson. Adam was a German immigrant from Saxony who had changed his surname from Reisinger to Singer. When Isaac was ten years old, his parents divorced and his father remarried. Isaac did not get along with his new stepmother, so at the age of twelve he left home. At first, the young Singer lived with his older brother in Oswego, New York, and worked in his brother’s machine shop. It was there that he learned the machinist’s trade.
In 1830, Singer married Catharine Maria Haley, and the newlyweds moved to New York City to live with her parents. Then, in the summer of 1833, the couple moved to Fly Creek in Otsego County, New York, where Singer went to work in a machine shop owned by George Pomeroy. After the birth of his first son, William, Singer moved his family back to New York City and found employment in a press shop.
Singer had long been interested in acting, and in 1836 he left his family and joined a company of traveling players. When they went to Baltimore, Singer met eighteen-year-old Mary Ann Sponseler. The next year, Mary Ann gave birth to his son Isaac while Catharine bore him a daughter, Lillian. Singer lived with Mary Ann in Baltimore, his marriage to Catharine effectively over, but he and his wife did not divorce until 1860.
Life’s Work
In 1839, Singer received his first patent for a rock-drilling machine that he developed while working with one of his older brothers digging the Illinois waterway. He sold the patent for $2,000. He used the money to form his own acting company, which he called the Merrit Players. He and Mary Ann, who now went by the names of Isaac Merrit and Mrs. Merrit, toured for five years until their money ran out. The couple eventually had ten children together.
When his money ran out, Singer found himself in Fredericksburg, Ohio, where he found employment in a print shop. His work inspired him to design a machine to cut wood and metal printing blocks. He moved on to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where on April 10, 1849, he patented his machine for carving wood and metal. He then moved back to New York City and built a working prototype of his machine at A. B. Taylor and Company, but when the shop’s boiler exploded, his machine was destroyed. Orson C. Phelps heard about Singer’s machine and asked him to come to Boston and build another one.
While there, Phelps asked Singer if he could improve the Lerow and Blodgett sewing machines that were being manufactured at Phelps’s shop. At first, Singer refused, thinking the machine mundane and beneath him, but he eventually agreed. In eleven days, Singer was able to make over the difficult, impractical machine. Singer patented his new design (patent number 8,294) on August 12, 1851. With financing from George B. Zieber, Singer, along with partners Zieber and Phelps, formed the Jenny Lind Sewing Machine Company, soon renamed I. M. Singer and Company.
By the time Singer filed his patent, several others had already independently developed sewing machines. Elias Howe had filed for a patent for his machine on September 10, 1846. Like Singer’s machine, Howe’s was an improved model of another machine—in this case, one invented by Walter Hunt. A lawsuit between Hunt and Howe was decided in Howe’s favor. Subsequently, Howe sued Singer.
By 1856, Singer, Baker, Grover, Watson, and Wheeler, all sewing machine manufacturers, were each accusing the others of patent infringement. The president of the Grover and Baker Company, Orlando B. Potter, suggested that the companies would fare better by sharing their patents. Together they brought Howe into their patent pool and formed the Sewing Machine Combination. I. M. Singer and Company was now free to mass-produce machines without fear of lawsuits.
Singer now faced the task of creating a market for his machines. Up to this point, sewing machines had only been used commercially by tailors and harness makers. Singer embarked on huge advertising campaigns aimed at housewives, and he provided an installment payment plan to make the machines affordable to all. I. M. Singer and Company manufactured and sold 2,564 machines in 1856 and built a factory in Scotland to produce machines for the European market.
Singer prospered financially, but his personal life was thorny. He moved to a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City with Mary Ann and their children, and in 1860 he divorced Catharine, accusing her of adultery. However, in 1862, when Mary Ann discovered that Singer had started another family with Mary McGonigal, with whom he now had five children, Mary Ann had him arrested for bigamy. Singer, disgraced, moved with McGonigal to London. Later, a fourth wife and daughter, Mary Eastwood Walters and Alice, surfaced in New York. In Europe, Singer left McGonigal, rekindled a relationship with Isabella Eugenie Boyer, and married her, pregnant, in 1863. They moved to Paris and eventually had six children.
In 1863, the I. M. Singer and Company was disbanded and then reorganized as the Singer Manufacturing Company. Singer continued to be a major stockholder, but he no longer was involved with the company’s operation. Singer later moved back to England with Isabella and built Oldway Mansion in Paignton. He died there in 1875 and was buried in the Torquay Cemetery.
Impact
In many ways, Singer is the epitome of the nineteenth century American self-made man and American Dream success story. Born into an impoverished, immigrant family and on his own at age twelve, Singer learned the machinist’s trade through his various odd jobs while pursuing his love of acting. Singer had the uncanny abilities to look at a need for a machine or an existing but impractical device and see how to design or improve it, to be at the right place at the right time, to surround himself with lawyers and financial bankers who could help him achieve his goals, and to use his ingenuity to develop the installment plan and his flair for the dramatic to sell his product.
While Singer did not invent the sewing machine, he improved it so that it could be used reliably and be manufactured at a reasonable cost. These two qualities made it practical to sell the machine to housewives and thus revolutionized sewing in America. The sewing machine could now be used both by commercial entities to sew clothing, harnesses, and even hydrogen balloons, and by domestic housewives to produce family clothing much more rapidly than by hand sewing.
Bibliography
Bissell, Don. The First Conglomerate: 145 Years of the Singer Company. Brunswick, Maine: Audenreed Press, 1999. Written by a president of the Singer Company, this book gives the history of the development of the sewing machine by Singer, and a short biography of Singer as the first president of the company, as well as biographies of all the subsequent presidents.
Brandon, Ruth. Singer and the Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance. New York: Kodansha America, 1996. An insightful biography of Singer, whom the author portrays as a womanizing actor, who was uninterested in sewing machines except as a vehicle to personal wealth. Illustrations, index.
Carlson, Laurie. Queen of Inventions: How the Sewing Machine Changed the World. Brookfield, Conn.: Millbrook Press, 2003. Geared to children age ten and up, this book tells the story of Singer’s “stitching machine” and explains how it revolutionized sewing. Well illustrated.
Head, Carol. Old Sewing Machines. Oxford, England: Shire, 2008. Discusses early sewing machines (up to the 1880’s) and offers good explanations of how they work. Illustrations, index.
Parton, James. History of the Sewing Machine. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Scholarly Publishing Office, 2005. A reprint of Parton’s book, originally published in 1872, colorfully describing the life of Elias Howe, his development of his sewing machine, and its connection with Singer. Illustrated with intriguing drawings depicting events in Howe’s life.