Elias Howe

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Elias Howe Jr. (July 9, 1819 – October 3, 1867) was an American entrepreneur best known for his invention of the modern lockstitch sewing machine.

Early life

Elias Howe Jr. was born in Spencer, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1819, to Dr. Elias Howe Sr. and Polly (Bemis) Howe. Howe spent his youth and early adult years in Massachusetts, where he apprenticed in a textile factory in Lowell, beginning in 1835. He and his cousin Nathaniel P. Banks went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to work as a mechanic with carding machines, which apprenticing as a result of the Panic of 1837. He apprenticed in the Cambridge shop of Ari Davis, a master mechanic who specialized in chronometer manufacture and repair of precision instruments beginning in 1838. Howe stumbled on the idea of a sewing machine when it was in Davis' employ.

He married Elizabeth Jennings Ames, the daughter of Simon Ames and Jane B. Ames, in Cambridge, on March 3, 1841. Jane Robinson Howe (1842–1922), Simon Ames Howe (1844–1883), and Julia Maria Howe (1846–1869). Rose Halladay was then married.

Adult life and legacy

Amasa Bemis Howe (died in 1868) and later his son Benjamin Porter Howe (died in 1868), established and operated a factory in New York City that produced sewing machines under the name Howe Sewing Machine Co., which obtained a gold medal at the London Exhibition of 1862. Elias himself founded The Howe Machine Co. in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which was run by Elias' sons-in-law, the Stockwell Brothers, from 1865 to 1886. Elias Howe's sewing machine earned a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and the same year he was honoured the Légion d'honneur by Napoleon III for his invention. Benjamin P. Howe sold the Howe Sewing Machine Co. factory and name to the Howe Machine Co., which combined the two companies in 1873.

Elias Howe died on October 3, 1867, after a massive blood clot. He was buried in Brooklyn, New York, in the Green-Wood Cemetery. Rose Halladay, his second wife, who died on October 10, 1890, is buried with him. Both Singer and Howe were multi-millionaires.

Howe was commemorated with a 5-cent stamp in the Famous American Inventors series, which was published on October 14, 1940.

The 1965 Beatles movie Help!

He was inducted into the United States National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2004.

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Invention of sewing machine and career

Howe was not the first to think of a sewing machine. Many others had conceived the idea of such a machine before he did, and in one case, at least 80 percent of them had patented their designs and produced working machines. Nevertheless, Howe made important changes to his predecessors' designs, and on September 10, 1846, he was awarded the first United States patent (U.S. Patent 4,750) for a sewing machine with a lockstitch pattern. His machine had three key features that were common to most modern machines: a needle with the eye at the time, a shuttle running underneath the cloth to create the lock stitch, and an automatic feed.

In a family history of his mother's family, a possibly apocryphal account of how he came up with the suggestion of placing the eye of the needle at the time is chronicled.

Despite winning his patent, Howe had a difficult time finding investors in the United States to finance his invention, so his older brother Amasa Bemis Howe returned to England in October 1846 to seek financing. Amasa was able to offer his first machine to William Thomas of Cheapside, London, who ran a corsets, umbrellas, and valises factory. In 1848, Elias and his family joined Amasa in London, but howe returned almost penniless to the United States after business conflicts with Thomas and his wife's declining health. Elizabeth, his wife, who predated Elias' return to the United States, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few years after his 1849 return.

Despite his efforts to market his machine, other entrepreneurs began making sewing machines. Howe was compelled to protect his patent in a court case that lasted from 1849 to 1854 because Isaac Singer, with the help of Walter Hunt, had invented and patented a facsimile of his machine and was selling it with the same lockstitch as Howe and patented. He won the contest and received significant royalties from Singer and others for the sale of his invention.

Howe contributed to the funds for the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry of the Union Army during the Civil War, when Howe served as a private in Company D. He served out his time riding to and from Baltimore with war news. He had joined August 14, 1862, and then mustered out July 19, 1865.

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