Isaac Merrit Singer was born October 27, 1811 in Pittstown, Rensselaer County, N. Y., the son of a millwright, who a few years later moved to Oswego, N. Y., to work at his trade. Here Singer spent his boyhood and received a bit of schooling. At twelve he left home, went to Rochester, N. Y., and for seven years worked at all sorts of unskilled labor. He finally entered a machine shop as an apprentice machinist, but after four months he left and began nine years of wandering from state to state, making a good living because of his mechanical cleverness and gaining wide experience. On May 16, 1839, while he was living in Lockport, Ill., he obtained his first patent, for a rock-drilling machine; however, he soon squandered the money he made when he sold it. In 1849, when he was in Pittsburgh, he secured a patent on a wood and metal-carving machine that he had begun five years before in Fredericksburg, Ohio. He went immediately to New York and secured the help of A. B. Taylor & Company to finance the development of his invention. After unavoidable delays lasting over a year, he completed a machine that was commercially practicable and operated it for a short time. Then a boiler explosion in the manufactory completely destroyed it and left him penniless.
Sewing machine patent model, patented May 30, 1853, patent number 10975, invented by Isaac M. Singer (1811-75), from SI
In 1851 he was at work in a machine shop in Boston when a Lerow and Blodgett sewing machine was brought in for repairs. He was called upon for suggestions and was told incidentally that if he could make a practical sewing machine his fortune would be made. Within twelve hours he had prepared a rough sketch and within eleven days had built a machine incorporating his ideas. He immediately applied for a patent, which was granted Aug. 12, 1851, patent No. 8294, and with a few hundred dollars borrowed from friends he organized the I. M. Singer & Company and began the manufacture of his machine. Though the sewing machine of Elias Howe [q.v.] was supreme at that time Singer's had one feature that Howe's lacked, the ability to do continuous stitching; because of this his machine came into immediate demand. When Howe brought suit for $25,000 because he refused to pay royalties, Singer fought it for three years, but in July 1854, losing the case, he was forced to pay $15,000 in settlement. By that time, however, his company had reached a commanding position in the sewing-machine industry, and took a leading part in bringing about the subsequent combination of manufacturers and the pooling of patents. Singer received twenty patents between 1851 and 1863 for improvements on his machine; the most important were the continuous wheel feed, the yielding presser foot, and the heart-shaped cam as applied to moving the needle bar. His greatest service, however, was in developing the first practical domestic sewing machine and in bringing it into general use. In 1863, with forty percent of the stock in his name, he withdrew from active connection with the company and went to Europe to live. Early in life he married Catherine Maria Haley, from whom he was divorced in 1860; in 1865 he married Isabella Eugenia Summerville in New York. At the time of his death July 23, 1875 at his home in Torquay, Devonshire, England, he was survived by his widow and two daughters.
1856 Family Model
Civil War soldier
text by Carl W. Mitman, Dictionary of American Biography
