- Before the sewing machine was invented, women spent a lot of time making and mending clothes for their families. Even an experienced seamstress would take 14 hours to make a man's shirt by hand. With a sewing machine, the same task took about an hour. So they significantly increased the amount of leisure time women had.
- Thomas Saint of England is credited with inventing the first sewing machine in 1790, although it's possible Charles Weisenthal had invented one in Germany 35 years earlier although the only record we have of Weisenthal's work is a patent for a needle for his machine.
- In 1846 an American inventor, Elias Howe invented the world's first practical and successful sewing machine, the first lockstitch sewing machine in the world.
- In 1863, during the American Civil War, Howe declared with pride that more than a million soldiers were “clothed, kitted and covered by fabric sewn on machines using my inventions”.
- The big name in the production and selling of these devices was Isaac Singer, a former actor, ditch digger and cabinetmaker, who made his fortune in the manufacture of sewing machines. Singer amassed a personal fortune of about $13 million from the sewing machine business.
- Singer once said, “I don’t care a damn for the invention. The dimes are what I’m after.” When you complain about how devices aren't built to last these days, it's possible Singer is to blame for that. While his early sewing machine models were made from cast iron and extremely durable, Singer realised people would pass them down through families and nobody would buy new ones. So he started making flimsy machines that wouldn't last anything like as long. He started buying back the originals and smashing them with sledgehammers to keep them off the market.
- It was Singer, also, who invented the payment plan, whereby customers could pay for a machine in instalments.
- Electric sewing machines were invented in 1899.
- Mahatma Gandhi wasn't a fan of machines in general, but he made an exception for sewing machines after learning to use one in prison. He said the sewing machine was “one of the few useful things ever invented.”
- The Wright brothers made the covering for their first airplane wing on a Singer sewing machine.
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