RECENT ADVANCES IN SEWING MACHINERY.

[Footnote: A recent lecture before the Society of Arts, London.]

By JOHN W. URQUHART.


The distinct improvements in sewing machinery to which I would invite your
attention this evening have reference more particularly to the results of
inventive effort within the past ten years. But although marked development
in the machines has occurred in so short a time, it may be taken for
granted that those advances are but the accumulated results of many years'
prior invention and experience of stitching appliances.

The history of the sewing machine, and the decision of the great question,
Who invented an apparatus that would unite fabrics by stitches? do not at
present concern us. Many sources of information are open to those who would
decide that extremely involved problem. But whether the production of the
first device of this kind be claimed for England or for America, it is
quite certain that no one man invented the perfect machine, and that those
fine specimens of sewing apparatus shown here to-night embody the labors of
many earnest workers, both in Europe and America.

Most of us are familiar with the arrangements of an ordinary lock stitch
machine, and an able paper by Mr. Edwin P. Alexander, embracing not only a
good account of its history, but most of the elements of the earlier
machines, has already (April 5, 1863), been read before you. This, and