Invention Timeline - Allen Benjamin Wilson, American Inventor; Invented a Sewing Machine Without Having Seen One
b. October 18, 1824 and d. April 29, 1888
American inventor. He was a cabinet-maker and in 1849 invented a sewing-machine without ever having seen one, patented November 12, 1850. In 1851 he secured a patent for the rotating hook, which was designed to supersede the shuttle and to make the lock-stitch with greater rapidity, neatness and economy of power; in 1852 he devised the four-motion feed, subsequently adopted on all machines. Wilson entered into partnership with Nathaniel Wheeler and they had a small shop in Watertown. Their first machine sold for $125; the demand increased and they removed the shop to Bridgeport, Conn., where they have made six hundred machines a day.
Many facts concur to show that we must look
deeper for our salvation than to steam, photographs,
balloons, or astronomy. They are reagents. Machinery
is aggressive. The weaver becomes a web, the
machinist a machine. All tools are in one sense
edge-tools, and dangerous. A man builds a fine
house; and now he has a master, and a task for
life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it
in repair, the rest of his days.
—Works and Days: Emerson
