Making Of A Giant: The History Of Singer

Ask anyone to name a sewing machine brand and the answer is almost always the same: Singer. For more than a century the name was so dominant that in many countries the word Singer simply meant sewing machine. But the story behind that little red S involves a runaway actor, one of the nastiest patent wars in American history, the invention of buying on installments, the largest sewing machine factory the world has ever seen, and even the most valuable Colt pistols ever made. Following our looks at Elna and Janome, here is the story of the biggest giant of them all.

The Runaway Actor Who Fixed A Sewing Machine

Isaac Merritt Singer, painted by Edward Harrison May. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Isaac Merritt Singer was born in 1811 in upstate New York, the youngest of eight children. He ran away at twelve and spent much of his early life as a touring stage actor, tinkering with inventions between engagements. His first patent, in 1839, was for a rock drilling machine.

In 1850, in a Boston machine shop, Singer was asked to look at some balky sewing machines. He concluded the shuttle should travel in a straight line rather than a circle, paired with a straight needle moving up and down. In August 1851 he received his patent for an improved sewing machine that could be driven by a foot treadle, leaving both hands free to guide the fabric. It was not the first sewing machine, but it was the first truly practical one for everyday use.

The catch: Singer’s machine used the lockstitch that Elias Howe had patented in 1846. Howe sued and won in 1854, and the whole tangle was finally resolved in 1856 with the first patent pool in American history, the Sewing Machine Combination, which collected royalties for every machine made. If you enjoy this era of invention and lawsuits, our short history of the sewing machine tells that side of the story.

The numbers explain why everyone was fighting. A skilled hand seamstress managed about 40 stitches a minute. Singer’s machine did 900. A shirt that took fifteen hours by hand took about one.

The Five Dollar Down Payment That Changed Shopping Forever

Singer’s true genius move came from his business partner, the lawyer Edward Clark. A sewing machine cost around 100 dollars at a time when an average family earned about 500 dollars a year. So in 1856 Clark introduced the hire purchase plan, generally credited as the first installment payment plan for consumer goods in the United States: five dollars down and the rest in small monthly payments. Sales roughly tripled the following year.

Clark also invented the trade in allowance, accepting any old machine in part payment, then destroying it so no secondhand market could undercut new sales. Add an army of door to door demonstrators, and Singer had written the playbook for selling household appliances decades before anyone else. By 1860 Singer was the largest sewing machine maker in the world, and by 1876 the company claimed two million machines sold.

“The Cycle of a Century” — an American Singer advertisement celebrating the machine’s progress from 1800 to 1900. Public domain via the Library of Congress.

The famous Red S Girl trademark, a woman at her machine wrapped in a giant red S, arrived in 1870 and became one of the most recognized logos on Earth.

The famous S Girl trademark, here on a 1912 German-language Singer newspaper advertisement. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Largest Sewing Machine Factory In The World

Singer built big. A vast plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey came first, then in 1867 the company opened its first overseas factory in Glasgow, Scotland, making Singer one of America’s first true multinationals. Between 1882 and 1885 it built the giant Kilbowie works at Clydebank near Glasgow: around 46 acres, roughly 7,000 workers, about 13,000 machines a week, with nearly three miles of railway line inside the factory.

Workers pouring out of the Singer factory at Clydebank, Scotland, once the largest sewing machine factory in the world. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Above it all stood a 200 foot clock tower carrying the Singer name, reputedly the largest four faced clock in the world: each face weighed five tons and it took four men fifteen minutes, twice a week, to wind it. From its opening until 1943 Clydebank produced roughly 36 million sewing machines. In 1913 alone it shipped 1.3 million.

The company’s confidence showed in New York too. In 1908 the 612 foot Singer Building opened as the tallest building in the world, a title it held for about a year.

The Singer Building in New York, the world’s tallest building in 1908, photographed in 1967 the year before it was demolished. Public domain, Historic American Buildings Survey.

The Machines We Still Hunt For

A classic black and gold Singer Model 27 with ornate pheasant decals. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The ornate black and gold Models 27 and 28 ruled parlors from the 1890s, many on cast iron treadle stands that still turn up (and still sew) today. The Model 66 of 1902 brought the modern drop in bobbin and its famous Red Eye decals. The smaller Model 99 followed as a portable version, and the Model 15 became one of the longest running machines ever produced.

And then there is the Featherweight 221, launched around the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair: an 11 pound aluminum jewel with a famously perfect straight stitch. Quilters and collectors treat Featherweights like family members, and fair badged examples are genuine grail machines.

Sewing Machines To Bombsights

Both world wars turned Singer’s factories over to war work. In the First World War, Clydebank alone took on more than 5,000 government contracts, producing millions of shells, fuses, aeroplane parts and even 361,000 horseshoes, with a workforce that was around 70 percent women by the end. In the Second World War, American Singer plants made bombsight components and rifle parts, and famously produced just 500 Colt .45 pistols before switching to precision instruments. Those 500 Singer pistols are now among the most valuable collector firearms in the world: one sold in 2017 for 414,000 dollars.

After the war came the golden age of home sewing: Teen Age sewing classes, hit machines like the 1957 Slant-o-Matic, and a Singer in seemingly every home. In an odd footnote of pop history, the company also sponsored the 1968 television special that became known as the Elvis Comeback Special.

Decline, Bankruptcy, And A New Home

From the 1960s cheaper imports and changing habits squeezed the company. Singer diversified into calculators, aerospace and defense electronics, and sewing shrank to a fraction of its business. The mighty Clydebank factory closed in 1980. After a string of spinoffs and takeovers, the sewing business hit Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999.

Today Singer lives on under SVP Worldwide, which also owns Husqvarna Viking and Pfaff, a neat echo of how Janome owns Elna. More than a third of consumer sewing machines sold worldwide today come from SVP’s three brands, so the giant, though humbled, is still very much with us.

Singer today: one of three brands under SVP Worldwide. Logos are trademarks of their respective owners.

Conclusion

Every time you buy anything on a payment plan, you are living in the world Singer and Clark built. And if a black and gold beauty or a treadle cabinet ever winks at you from an estate sale, now you know its story. If all this history has you eyeing a new machine instead, our honest guide to the best sewing machines for beginners will point you the right way.