Isaac Merritt Singer is a true American
classic: born October 27, 1811 in Oswego, New York, he improved greatly on an
existing product -- the sewing machine -- making it far easier to use in the
home, and created a company making his product, and using a business model that
still exists to this day, well over a century later.
His Early Life
Born in Oswego, New York in 1811, Isaac Merritt Singer grew up fast,
leaving his home at age twelve. When he was nineteen, he began working in his
older brother's machine shop. It was there that he learned the trade of
being a machinist, the trade that would ultimately leave his name on sewing
machines around the world.1
He
grew into a tall man; at six feet four inches, he towered over most people, yet
didn't believe that machining was his future. He wanted to follow a
different vocation, that of the stage. Isaac wanted to be an actor.
In 1830, around the time he started working
for his brother, Isaac married the first of his two wives, Catharine Maria
Haley -- who was fifteen at the time -- by which they had two children, William
and Lillian.2 When William was five years old and Lillian still
not born yet, Isaac moved his family to New York City where he worked in a
press shop for a year. He left the press shop to become an agent for a
company of actors touring through Baltimore, Maryland. While working as
the agent, he met a woman named Mary Ann Sponsler and because thoroughly
enchanted to the point where he proposed to her though he never followed
through.3 He did, however return to New York in 1837 where
Isaac became a father twice that year: his wife gave birth to Lillian and his
mistress Mary Ann arrived soon after, already pregnant. She gave birth to
Isaac's second son, Isaac Augustus.
Isaac and Catharine's marriage went downhill from there, Catharine
suspecting and possibly even knowing about Mary Ann. However, Isaac and
Catharine didn't officially divorce until January 23 of 1860. Mary Ann,
once she found out Isaac was already married, surely wasn't happy.4
Isaac did the only thing he could: he left town. He went back to
Baltimore with Mary Ann and told people in Baltimore that she was his wife.5
Isaac the Inventor
Isaac left New York and the mess he created with his wife, children, and
his mistress to head to Chicago to work on the construction of the
Illinois-Michigan canal. It was while working on the canal in 1839 that
Isaac obtained his first patent on a machine he had invented that drilled
through rock. He sold the patent to the I&M Canal Building Company
for $2,000.6 With his newfound wealth, Isaac returned to his
first love, acting.
Isaac formed and acting troupe called the Merritt Players, using the
stage name of Isaac Merritt (dropping the Singer from his name).
He even had Mary Ann Sponslor return to the stage as an actress, using
the name Mary Ann Merritt. The Merritt Players toured for about five
years all over North America.7
After a couple more jobs in printing and wood signs, Isaac landed in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he developed a machine that gave him his second
patent: a "machine for carving wood and metal."8
Isaac Singer, at age 38, with two wives and eight children between them,
returned to New York. It was while he was in New York, trying to sell the
machine that he was given an advance from a man named George B. Zieber -- a man
who figured prominently in Singer's future -- to build a prototype of the wood
and metal carving machine that actually worked.9 Along with
the advance money from Zieber, Singer was also offered a place where sewing
machines were being manufactured in Boston to set up his prototype once he
built it. The sewing machines were being built by the "moderately
successful Lowell and Blodget Company"10 in a shop owned by
Orson C. Phelps.
And, in 1850, he once again packed up his family and moved, this time to
Massachusetts.
Isaac the Innovator
It
was in Boston in 1850 that Isaac Singer got his idea for improving on the
sewing machine. Why not make it smaller and easier to use in the home?
Why shouldn't people be able to make their own clothes at home faster
than sewing by hand? That was what prompted the idea to make a smaller,
more manageable sewing machine, but it wasn't how he started with the machines.
At
Phelps's shop in Boston, Phelps asked Singer to look at one of the machines and
repair it if possible. Singer, rather than repair the machine, saw that
the machine would work more efficiently and reliably if the needle were
straight rather than curved, and the shuttle -- the piece that moves the needle
-- moved in a straight line rather than in a circle.11 He also
installed a presser-foot for feeding the fabric -- a part that the fabric sits
on and pulls the fabric under the needle.12 He also designed
the now-familiar shape of the sewing machine with the "arm" that
extends out over the worktable that holds the needle over the "foot."
What all this did was make sewing more efficient and time-saving,
improving the number of stitches from an experienced seamstresses 40 stiches
per minute by hand to 900 stitches on the sewing machine.13
Singer asked Zieber for financing, which he received, and became partners
with Zieber and Phelps, creating the "Jenny Lind Sewing Machine,"
named for a Swedish songstress. Singer applied for, and acquired, patents
for his improvements to the sewing machine. He did, however, lose a
lawsuit for patent infringement in 1854 when he used Elias Howe's eye-pointed
needle and lock-stitch method in the machine's methods of sewing.14
Yet it didn't stop him from manufacturing his machines in a partnership
with Edward Clark. They formed their
partnership in 1851 and in nine years, the I. M. Singer & Company was the
largest producer of sewing machines anywhere in the world.15
Singer’s partnership with Clark made
them both a lot of money. Singer
continued to refine the mechanics of his sewing machine with innovations like
interchangeable parts and reducing the size and weight. Clark, meanwhile, was streamlining the
business side as Singer handled the manufacturing; he created purchase plans
using installment payments as well as taking old sewing machines in as
trade-ins on newer models, much like car purchases are done today. The result was a booming business with
soaring sales at about $10 per machine.16
Singer aimed his marketing not only at
commercial customers, but also at housewives.
With his inexpensive sewing machines, shown off in large showrooms, with
a team of mechanics, sewing instructors and easily accessible replacement
parts, the Singer sewing machine became a status symbol for self-reliant
American families.17
In 1863, a man named Ebenezer Butterick, a
tailor, had his own innovation for the American household that went hand in
hand with Singer’s sewing machines: dress patterns. Combined with “America’s most popular sewing
machine,”18 Butterick’s dress patterns made a powerful combination
that made Singer a wealthy man but the time he died in 1875 on his British
estate, “the Wigwam.”19
Despite Singer’s womanizing and attraction
to the theater, he was a great innovator in both his sewing machine and
business model using credit and installment plans, all of which helped shape
America’s modern credit system. Singer
might be famous for his sewing machine, but his other contributions helped form
modern America.
Notes
1. Evans, Harold. They
Made America. (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004). p 86
2. "Isaac Merritt Singer." Encyclopædia
Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.,
2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/545806/Isaac-Merrit-Singer>.
3.
Evans, p 87-88
4. "Isaac
Merritt Singer." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 31 Mar.
2012<http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Singer-IM.html>.
5.
“Isaac Merritt Singer.” New World
Encyclopedia. 2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2012. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Isaac_Merritt_Singer.
6. Columbia
Encyclopedia.
7. Encyclopædia Britannica.
8. Bissel, D.C. The First
Conglomerate: 145 Years of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Brunswick,
ME: Audenreed Press, 1999. p
45
9. Encyclopædia Britannica.
10. Encyclopædia
Britannica.
11. Brandon, Ruth. Singer and the
Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance. New York: Kodansha International,
1977. p 95-97
12. Brandon, p. 100
13. Encyclopædia Britannica.
14. New World Encyclopedia
15. Bissel, p. 60
16. Encyclopædia Britannica.
17. Encyclopædia
Britannica.
18. Columbia
Encyclopedia.
19. New World Encyclopedia.
Bibliography
Evans, Harold.
They Made America. (New York:
Little, Brown and Company, 2004).
"Isaac Merritt Singer." Encyclopædia
Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.,
2012. Web. 31 Mar. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/545806/Isaac-Merrit-Singer>.
"Isaac Merritt Singer." The Columbia
Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 31
Mar. 2012<http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Singer-IM.html>.
Bissel, D.C. The First Conglomerate: 145 Years of the
Singer Sewing Machine Company. Brunswick, ME: Audenreed Press, 1999.
Brandon, Ruth. Singer
and the Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance. New York: Kodansha
International, 1977.
“Isaac Merritt Singer.” New World Encyclopedia. 2012. Web. 31
Mar. 2012. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Isaac_Merritt_Singer.
