f Arts, London.]

By JOHN W. URQUHART.

The distinct improvements in sewing machinery to which I would invite your
attention this evening have reference more particularly to the results of
inventive effort within the past ten years. But although marked development
in the machines has occurred in so short a time, it may be taken for
granted that those advances are but the accumulated results of many years'
prior invention and experience of stitching appliances.

The history of the sewing machine, and the decision of the great question,
Who invented an apparatus that would unite fabrics by stitches? do not at
present concern us. Many sources of information are open to those who would
decide that extremely involved problem. But whether the production of the
first device of this kind be claimed for England or for America, it is
quite certain that no one man invented the perfect machine, and that those
fine specimens of sewing apparatus shown here to-night embody the labors of
many earnest workers, both in Europe and America.

Most of us are familiar with the arrangements of an ordinary lock stitch
machine, and an able paper by Mr. Edwin P. Alexander, embracing not only a
good account of its history, but most of the elements of the earlier
machines, has already (April 5, 1863), been read before you. This, and
sundry descriptions of such apparatus in the engineering papers, confine my
remarks to the more recent improvements in three great classes of machines.
These are, briefly, plain sewing machines; sewing machines as used in
factories, where they are moved by steam power; and special sewing
machines, embracing many interesting forms, only recently introduced. We
have thus to consider, in the first place, the general efficiency of the
machine as a plain stitcher. Secondly, its adaptability to high rates of
speed, and the provision that has been made to withstand such velocities
for a reasonable time. And, thirdly, the apparatus and means employed to
effect the controlling of the motive power when applied to the machines.

To deal with the subject in this way must, I fear, involve a good deal of
technical description; and I hope to be pardoned if in attempting to
elucidate the more important devices, use must be made of words but seldom
heard outside of a machinists' workshop.

It appears scarcely necessary to premise that the sewing machine of twenty
years ago has almost faded away, save, perhaps, in general exterior