A Servant in the House" prompted the writing of this work.
I would also like to thank Mr. Bogart Thompson of the Singer
Manufacturing Company for his cooperation in arranging for the gift
of an excellent collection of 19th-century sewing machines to the
Smithsonian and for allowing me to use the Singer historical files.
Acknowledgment is also made of the cooperation extended by The
Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village for permitting me to study
their collection of old sewing machines.

_Grace Rogers Cooper_

_Chapter One_

[Illustration: Figure 1.--AFTER ALMOST A CENTURY OF ATTEMPTS TO INVENT A
MACHINE THAT WOULD SEW, the practical sewing machine evolved in the
mid-19th century. This elegant, carpeted salesroom of the 1870s, with
fashionable ladies and gentlemen scanning the latest model sewing
machines, reflects the pinnacle reached by the new industry in just a
few decades. This example, one of many of its type, is the Wheeler and
Wilson sewing-machine offices and salesroom, No. 44 Fourteenth Street,
Union Square, New York City. From _The Daily Graphic_, New York City,
December 29, 1874. (Smithsonian photo 48091-A.)]

Early Efforts

To 1800

For thousands of years, the only means of stitching two pieces of fabric
together had been with a common needle and a length of thread. The
thread might be of silk, flax, wool, sinew, or other fibrous material.
The needle, whether of bone, silver, bronze, steel, or some other metal,
was always the same in design--a thin shaft with a point at one end and
a hole or eye for receiving the thread at the other end. Simple as it
was, the common needle (fig. 2) with its thread-carrying eye had been an
ingenious improvement over the sharp bone, stick, or other object used
to pierce a hole through which a lacing then had to be passed.[1] In
addition to utilitarian stitching for such things as the making of
garments and household furnishings, the needle was also used for
decorative stitching, commonly called embroidery. And it was for this
purpose that the needle, the seemingly perfect tool that defied
improvement, was first altered for ease of stitching and to increase
production.

One of the forms that the needle took in the process of adaptation was
that of the fine steel hook. Called an _aguja_ in Spain, the hook was
used in making a type of lace known as _punto de aguja_. During the 17th
century after the introduction of cha