Part 3 (2/2)

While there, he inadvertently broke the rules, and was shot by the guard for failing to reply to a challenge which he did not understand.

When Howe got back to the United States, he found a number of ingenious persons engaged in producing or experimenting in sewing-machines, and some of them were trenching on his own patent rights. He raised enough money, somehow, to redeem his p.a.w.ned machine in England, and then raised actions against all who were infringing it. The litigation was tremendous both in duration and expense, but it ended in the victory of Elias Howe, to whom, by the finding of the court, the other patentees were found liable for royalty. It is said that Howe, who as we have seen left London in debt, received, before his patent expired in 1867, upwards of two million dollars in royalties alone.

But ingenious men were now busy in both hemispheres in perfecting what, up till about fifty years ago, was regarded as nothing better than a clever toy. Besides Morey, the Manchester man we have mentioned, a Huddersfield machinist, named Drake, brought out a machine to work with a shuttle. About the same time, or a little later, a young Nottingham man, named John Fisher, constructed a machine with a sort of lock-st.i.tch movement, which he afterwards adapted to a double loop-st.i.tch. But Fisher's machine was intended rather for embroidering than for plain sewing.

Pa.s.sing over some minor attempts, the next great development was that of Allen Wilson, who, without having heard either of Howe's or of any other machine, constructed one in 1849, the design of which, he said, he had been meditating for two years. His first machine had original features, however much it may have been antic.i.p.ated in principle by Howe's patent.

In Wilson's second design, a rotary hook was subst.i.tuted for a two-pointed shuttle, and by other improvements he achieved a greater speed than had been attained by other inventors. Later still, he added the 'four-motion feed,' which is adopted on most of the machines now in general use.

This idea was an elaboration of a principle which seems to have first occurred to the unfortunate Morey. In Morey's machine there was a horizontal bar with short teeth, which caught the fabric and dragged it forward as the st.i.tches were completed. It took nearly thirty years, however, to evolve the perfect 'feed' motion out of Morey's first crude germ.

While Wilson was working away, perfecting his now famous machine, an observing and thoughtful young millwright was employed in a New York factory. One day a sewing-machine was sent in for repairs, and after examining its mechanism, this young man, whose name was Isaac Singer, confidently expressed his belief that he could make a better one. He did not propose either to appropriate or abandon the principle, but to improve upon it. Instead of a curved needle, as in Howe's and Wilson's machines, he adopted a straight one, and gave it a perpendicular instead of a curvular motion. And for propelling the fabric he introduced a wheel, instead of the toothed bar of the Morey design.

It need hardly be said that the Singer machine is now one of the most widely known, and is turned out in countless numbers in enormous factories on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not so well known, perhaps, that Singer, who was a humble millwright in 1850, and who died in 1875, left an estate valued at three millions sterling--all ama.s.sed in less than twenty-five years!

The machines of Howe, Wilson, and Singer were on the lock-st.i.tch principle, and the next novelty was the invention of Grover and Baker, who brought out a machine working with two needles and two continuous threads. After this came the Gibbs machine, the story of which may be briefly told.

About the year 1855, James G. Gibbs heard of the Grover and Baker machine, and having a turn for mechanics, began to ponder over how the action described was produced. He got an ill.u.s.tration, but could make nothing of it, and not for a year did he obtain sight of a Singer machine at work. As in the case of Singer with Wilson's machine, so Gibbs thought he could improve on Singer's, and turn out one less ponderous and complicated. He set to work, and in a very short time took out a patent for a new lock-st.i.tch machine. But he was not satisfied with this, and experimented away, with an idea of making a chain-st.i.tch by means of a revolving looper. This idea he eventually put into practical form, and took out a patent for the first chain-st.i.tch sewing-machine.

Since the days of Elias Howe, the number of patents taken out for sewing-machines has been legion--certainly not less than one thousand--and probably no labour-saving appliance has received more attention at the hands both of inventors and of the general public.

There is scarcely a household in the land now, however humble, without a sewing-machine of some sort, and in factories and warehouses they are to be numbered by the thousand. Some machinists have directed their ingenuity to the reduction of wear and tear, others to the reduction of noise, others to acceleration of speed, others to appliances for supplying the machine in a variety of ways, others for adapting it to various complicated processes of st.i.tching and embroidering. Some users prefer the lock-st.i.tch, and some the chain-st.i.tch principle, and each system has its peculiar advantages according to the character of the work to be sewn.

A recent development is a combination of both principles in one machine.

Mr Edward Kohler patented a machine which will produce either a lock-st.i.tch or a chain-st.i.tch, as may be desired, and an embroidery st.i.tch as well. By a very ingenious contrivance the machinery is altered by the simple movement of a b.u.t.ton, and (when the chain-st.i.tch is required) the taking out of the bobbin from the shuttle. If the embroidery st.i.tch is wanted, the b.u.t.ton is turned without removing the bobbin, and the lock-st.i.tch and chain-st.i.tch are combined in one new st.i.tch, with which very elaborate effects can be produced. It is said that the Kohler principle can be easily adapted to all, or most, existing machines.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

WOOL AND COTTON.

WOOL.--What is Wool?--Chemical Composition--Fibre--Antiquity of Shepherd Life--Varieties of Sheep--Introduction into Australia--Spanish Merino--Wool Wealth of Australia--Imports and Exports of Wool and Woollen Produce--Woollen Manufacture.

COTTON.--Cotton Plant in the East--Mandeville's Fables about Cotton--Cotton in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt--Columbus finds Cotton-yarn and Thread in 1492--In Africa--Manufacture of Cloth in England--The American Cotton Plant.

WOOL.

What is wool? 'The covering of the sheep, of course,' replies somebody.

Yes; but what _is_ it? Let us ask Professor Owen. 'Wool,' he says, 'is a peculiar modification of hair, characterised by fine transverse or oblique lines from two to four thousand in the extent of an inch, indicative of a minutely imbricated scaly surface, when viewed under the microscope, on which and on its curved or twisted form depends its remarkable felting property.' At first sight this definition seems bewildering, but it will bear examination, and is really more tangible than, for instance, Noah Webster's definition of wool: 'That soft curled or crisped species of hair which grows on sheep and some other animals, and which in fineness sometimes approaches to fur.' It is usually that which grows on sheep, however, that we know as wool, and the number of imbrications, serratures, or notches indicates the quality of the fibre.

Thus, in the wool of the Leicester sheep there are 1850--in Spanish merino, 2400--in Saxon merino, 2700, to an inch, and the fewer there are the nearer does wool approach to hair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Wool-sorters at Work.]

Here is a still more minute description by Youatt, a great authority on wool: 'It consists of a central stem or stalk, probably hollow, or at least porous, and possessing a semi-transparency, found in the fibre of the hair. From this central stalk there springs, at different distances in different breeds of sheep, a circlet of leaf-shaped projections. In the finer species of wool these circles seemed at first to be composed of one indicated or serrated ring; but when the eye was accustomed to them, this ring was resolvable into leaves or scales. In the larger kinds, the ring was at once resolvable into these scales or leaves, varying in number, shape, and size, and projecting at different angles from the stalk, and in the direction of the leaves of vegetables--that is, from the root to the point. They give to the wool the power of felting.'

This is the estimate of the chemical composition of good wool: Carbon, 50.65; hydrogen, 7.03; nitrogen, 17.71; oxygen and sulphur, 24.61. Out of a hundred parts, ninety-eight would be organic, and two would be ash, consisting of oxide of iron, sulphate of lime, phosphate of lime, and magnesia. What is called the 'yolk' of wool is a compound of oil, lime, and potash. It makes the pile soft and pliable, and is less apparent on English sheep than on those of warmer countries, the merino sheep having the most 'yolk.'

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