Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm the executive producer of this show and
Speaker 1: a couple of others, and I love all things tech
Speaker 1: and it is time for a classic episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published way back on October two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen. It was about a topic that I didn't
Speaker 1: think when I first started going into it was going
Speaker 1: to be particularly interesting or have any controversy around it.
Speaker 1: I was incredibly wrong. This is the sewing machine. Enjoy.
Speaker 1: We want to talk about patent wars, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about patent wars on tech Stuff before. Patent wars are
Speaker 1: when you've got at least two, but sometimes multiple entities
Speaker 1: all claiming ownership for some kind of technology and competing
Speaker 1: against each other and sometimes taking each other to court
Speaker 1: and saying nasty things about each other's moms. And you
Speaker 1: might think that that's a pretty recent activity, you know,
Speaker 1: the smartphone, that that's a big patent war, right, lots
Speaker 1: of modern viciousness around patents. But here's the thing that
Speaker 1: modern viciousness has a long and detailed history that we
Speaker 1: can trace back to one of the most important pieces
Speaker 1: of technology. I am not using hyper bowl people, this
Speaker 1: is true to me. It's certainly a super important piece
Speaker 1: of technology. Mean, when you look at when you look
Speaker 1: at mass production, this is one of the specific pieces
Speaker 1: of technology that makes mass production possible. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: sewing machines. So sewing machines, as it turns out, were
Speaker 1: the focus of one of the first major patent wars.
Speaker 1: And the story is a complex one, filled with joy
Speaker 1: and tragedy and a lot of crabbiness and some some stitches,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot needles, a lot of that. If
Speaker 1: any of your listeners have listened to the Stephy Maston
Speaker 1: history class episode on this very thing, a lot of
Speaker 1: this will be repeat information. Yeah, but it's just so fascinating,
Speaker 1: how completely similar to modern day arguments over tech, these
Speaker 1: ones where I mean it's it's it's you can draw
Speaker 1: direct parallels. I mean, seriously, when you look at a
Speaker 1: company trying to make a piece of technology as complex essay,
Speaker 1: a tablet or a smartphone. Now, a tablet or a
Speaker 1: smartphone by itself is one thing, but it's made up
Speaker 1: of numerous individual components, some of which may not be
Speaker 1: owned by one particular entity. The same thing is true
Speaker 1: with sewing machines, as it turns out, absolutely So before
Speaker 1: we jump into the sordid history of the sewing machine,
Speaker 1: I thought I would remind folks what a patent is.
Speaker 1: What's all about. So patents are that's a set of
Speaker 1: exclusive rights granted by a government some form of agency
Speaker 1: that has authority to an inventor or an assigning for
Speaker 1: the use of an invention. Now, an invention does not
Speaker 1: have to be a complete thing all by itself. It
Speaker 1: could be a component of a thing, like if you
Speaker 1: were to have a full invention. Let's say it's a
Speaker 1: washing machine, because we've done a tech stuff episode about
Speaker 1: washing machines, and you come up with a way to
Speaker 1: improve washing machines so that they wash clothes, uh more
Speaker 1: thoroughly or without as much bashing around, so the clothing
Speaker 1: doesn't take as much of a beating. And you come
Speaker 1: up with that that improvement, and then you patent it.
Speaker 1: You can do that, that's perfectly acceptable, and then any
Speaker 1: washing machine that would use that particular improvement would have
Speaker 1: to either have been made by you or have received
Speaker 1: your permission to use that specific technology. So patents can
Speaker 1: be for a full invention with all the different components,
Speaker 1: or it can be just a tiny little thing that's
Speaker 1: an improvement. The point of it is the reason why
Speaker 1: you would want to patent it is that you get
Speaker 1: those ex elusive rights to use that technology. Now, in
Speaker 1: return for that, you have to disclose how that technology works.
Speaker 1: You submit a patent application that has a full description
Speaker 1: of the mechanism and the purpose of your invention, and
Speaker 1: that becomes publicly available, and once the patent expires, which
Speaker 1: they do, anyone can access that information and make use
Speaker 1: of it. But during the course of that patent, that
Speaker 1: the lifespan of that patent, it's all you, boss. They
Speaker 1: got to come through you. Yeah, Although that is an
Speaker 1: interesting one related to what we're talking about today, because
Speaker 1: there were several instances on the road to the sewing
Speaker 1: machine actually becoming a fully fledged thing where there were
Speaker 1: some FIBs told in the patent filings so that they
Speaker 1: could keep their proprietary information to themselves, so when people
Speaker 1: tried to replicate them, they did not always work. Right. See,
Speaker 1: you could if you wanted to, if you invented something.
Speaker 1: There's nothing nothing that requires you to get a patent.
Speaker 1: You could keep it secret and say this magical technology
Speaker 1: is mine and minal loan. But the danger of that,
Speaker 1: of course, is if someone gets hold of it and
Speaker 1: figures out how it works, they could then make the
Speaker 1: same thing with and you would have no protection. Not
Speaker 1: only could they make the same thing, they could file
Speaker 1: a patent for it, and then you would no longer
Speaker 1: be able to use the thing you invented. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: all about first rites. Yeah, so, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: and we haven't even gotten into the complication of filing
Speaker 1: for a patent in one country versus filing for a
Speaker 1: button and another. But we've we've hemmed in hod long
Speaker 1: enough about patents. Let's start off. Tell me what what
Speaker 1: was sewing before the sewing machine. Well, most people would
Speaker 1: probably recognize it if they thought about pre sewing machines sewing,
Speaker 1: they would think of an needle and thread. But even
Speaker 1: way before that, there were people using bones and sticks
Speaker 1: to kind of poke holes into fabrics, usually leathers, and
Speaker 1: then they would pass a lace through. It was not
Speaker 1: all one continuous thing where the lace was attached to
Speaker 1: the the boner stick and then they added the eye
Speaker 1: that circle that the whatever you're lacing material passes through. Right.
Speaker 1: The thing that confounds me whenever I have to thread
Speaker 1: a needle. Many people say that I think he either
Speaker 1: got it or you don't. I don't got it. Um,
Speaker 1: I hope I keep it forever, because I have a
Speaker 1: few friends who are saying are getting to the age
Speaker 1: and their eyesight isn't letting them keep it anymore. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so that eventually that I was added and people were
Speaker 1: able to do it all in one fell swoop where
Speaker 1: they poked the whole and passed the binding material through,
Speaker 1: and that also developed things like embroidery. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: really until the Industrial Revolution that stitching became mechanized. And
Speaker 1: even pre Industrial Revolution in the mid seventeen hundreds, where
Speaker 1: kind of industry was first starting to get seated, is
Speaker 1: really where we started having first people on record actually
Speaker 1: filing things. Right. So you have Charles Wisenthal here who
Speaker 1: received a patent for a needle for a sewing machine,
Speaker 1: but it had a distinct disadvantage and that it was
Speaker 1: a design for a needle for a machine that didn't exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just really felt like he had the needle situation
Speaker 1: where down and eventually the rest would follow. You've got
Speaker 1: to really nail the needle. Is his approach, which is true.
Speaker 1: The needle how it came to be where it is
Speaker 1: today really took a lot of iterations. And his needle
Speaker 1: had was pointed on both ends, and it had an eye.
Speaker 1: But the eye was in the middle, which is not
Speaker 1: If anybody knows a modern sewing machine or hand sewing needle,
Speaker 1: the eye is usually not in the middle. Right. So
Speaker 1: then we move forward to we have Thomas st who
Speaker 1: I love the title of his patents. We talked about
Speaker 1: this in the history podcast. It's it's so succaint, it's
Speaker 1: it's so delightful and just completely rebos. Do you want
Speaker 1: to read it? Let me, let me do this all right?
Speaker 1: So he's an English cabinet maker, so uh sorry, listeners,
Speaker 1: Here we go an entire new method of making and
Speaker 1: completing shoes, boots, splatter, dashes, clogs, and other articles by
Speaker 1: means and tools, and by means of tools and machines
Speaker 1: also invented by me for that purpose, and of certain
Speaker 1: compositions of the nature of japan or varnish, which will
Speaker 1: be very advantageous in many useful applications. End quote. Don't
Speaker 1: you just feel like this is sewing as described by
Speaker 1: a Monty Python sketch. It does feel like John Cleese
Speaker 1: is the person who needs to deliver that patent title.
Speaker 1: For me, it's Terry Jones, but we all have our favorite.
Speaker 1: That's fair. You went more Welsh. That's all right, that's
Speaker 1: it's fine with that. So he's actually describing three different
Speaker 1: machines in this patent um. So the second of the three,
Speaker 1: which is why it's so crazy wordy, I mean Japan
Speaker 1: and varnish, which are the words used for like these
Speaker 1: coding um methods have nothing to do with stitching. But
Speaker 1: he kind of lumped everything together. And he was a
Speaker 1: cabinet maker. I think maybe he didn't like to file
Speaker 1: a lot of paper. Yeah, that's probably one of those
Speaker 1: things where thought, goodness, gracious, this is a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just lump it all together. One very wordy
Speaker 1: document will cover me. So the second part of his
Speaker 1: patent was actually the one for stitching, and it really
Speaker 1: wasn't terribly practical. It had a lot of components that
Speaker 1: we actually associate with modern sewing machines. So it had
Speaker 1: arm with the needle, it had a continuous thread from
Speaker 1: a spool, uh and it had a table set up
Speaker 1: that the cloth would sit on, and those all still
Speaker 1: persist in some form or another. But his is a
Speaker 1: case where there's no actual example of his machine having
Speaker 1: been built, although in eighteen seventy three Newton Wilson, who
Speaker 1: was from Great Britain, found the plans and he did
Speaker 1: build this machine, but it did not work. And this
Speaker 1: is one of those ones that we talked about a
Speaker 1: little bit ago, where the suspicion is that he didn't
Speaker 1: entirely disclose what he was getting, right, leave a few
Speaker 1: things out of the patent design so that folks don't
Speaker 1: automatically go out there and actually start making one uh.
Speaker 1: One thing about patents, by the way, there's no guarantee
Speaker 1: that your design has to work. It has to it
Speaker 1: has to be reasonably you know, the people at the
Speaker 1: patent offices have to reasonably believe that you you believe
Speaker 1: it will work the way you've designed it. But you
Speaker 1: don't have to prove. Yeah, there's not a proofing stage design. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to bring one in and say, well, here,
Speaker 1: let me put it in motion and show you that
Speaker 1: all the parts move the way I've described it in
Speaker 1: the patent. It really is just meant to prevent other
Speaker 1: people from making that same design without your permission. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: then in four we've got this story about Thomas Stone
Speaker 1: and James Henderson who were issued a patent in France
Speaker 1: for their own kind of sewing machine. Right. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: kind of created an overcast stitch. So if you don't
Speaker 1: know what that is, I do not. Um. If you
Speaker 1: see like a situation where two pieces of cloth are
Speaker 1: bound together and there's a stitch that passes through each
Speaker 1: one and kind of spirals around the edges and then
Speaker 1: back through, that's an overcast okay, all right, um, so
Speaker 1: this was similar. It's also called a whip stitch when
Speaker 1: you do it by hand, so it's very simple. But
Speaker 1: it could work on all different kinds of fabrics. And
Speaker 1: it was able to stitch curves. Okay, so it's not
Speaker 1: just a straight line like some of the other devices
Speaker 1: will be talking about. Correct, Like a lot of them
Speaker 1: will only go in a straight line, but this one
Speaker 1: could handle curves. That The one big drawback of it, though,
Speaker 1: was that it did not have a continuous thread feed,
Speaker 1: so there was a lot of stopping and going and
Speaker 1: re threading of needles and hating. So it saved time,
Speaker 1: we think theoretically, I say that with a question mark
Speaker 1: on purpose. Right, maybe it saves time for someone who
Speaker 1: just really hates the motion of actually making a stitch. Well,
Speaker 1: or if you're doing like large scale things like leathers
Speaker 1: and probably help. So that same year you have John
Speaker 1: Duncan of Glasgow here patenting an embroidery machine, which is
Speaker 1: not quite the same thing as a stitching machine, correct.
Speaker 1: I mean it does do stitches, but it's not the
Speaker 1: same sort of utilitarian things that would hold together pants. Right,
Speaker 1: we'll just make the pants beautiful. I've learned that through
Speaker 1: a better experience. In seven we have Edward Walter Chapman
Speaker 1: and Walter Chapman. It's not confusing at all receiving a
Speaker 1: British patent three thousand, seventy eight. That's another thing that
Speaker 1: I think is interesting. You look at the history of
Speaker 1: sewing machines and you look at those patent numbers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when they're still in the four digit range, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: If guys go to the patent I'll go to like
Speaker 1: Google search for patents and look up any patent that's
Speaker 1: been issued over the last couple of years. We're talking
Speaker 1: in the millions here, Yeah, and this is when they
Speaker 1: were still in the thousands, which is pretty incredible. It
Speaker 1: really does show that the patent industry here was very young.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this was the one that allowed a machine
Speaker 1: that had a needle that would not have to pass
Speaker 1: all the way through the fabric. It could just puncture it,
Speaker 1: uh slightly and then pull back out and make the
Speaker 1: stitch that way, right, which is how modern machines still
Speaker 1: were for the most part. I think there's a couple
Speaker 1: of specialty machines that do different things. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: it had two needles. One, as you said, punched in
Speaker 1: and passed the thread down. Another kind of shuttled through
Speaker 1: it and then it got pulled back up. So um,
Speaker 1: continuous stitching via these two different thread feeds. Cool. And
Speaker 1: then we have my favorite name on our list. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorites eight thirty. So it's bartelling me Himnier.
Speaker 1: I love a good French name. Yeah, that's a great one,
Speaker 1: as there's two th in there, and as I recall,
Speaker 1: that's a hard tea but I could be wrong. It
Speaker 1: is it is. And his machine made a chain stitch
Speaker 1: and there are still machines very similar to this functioning today.
Speaker 1: They're not used a whole lot because it's one of
Speaker 1: those things. You may have even come across them periodically.
Speaker 1: If you ever have, like an article of clothing that's
Speaker 1: maybe not super pricy, you may be bought it, you know,
Speaker 1: a cheap store, and you pull one thread and the
Speaker 1: whole thing starts coming out. That's often a chain stitch
Speaker 1: because it's the one thread holding everything together, so there's
Speaker 1: nothing stopping it from continuing to unravel. Right. That's what
Speaker 1: I always get nervous now whenever I see a loose thread,
Speaker 1: and I'm more of a snipper than a than a
Speaker 1: tugger at it. Not I'm a yanker, but I know
Speaker 1: I can fix it if it all goes a right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For me, it's it's fixing means going out and buying
Speaker 1: a new one. We're gonna pause on our stitching right
Speaker 1: now with the sewing machine and take a quick break.
Speaker 1: What I love about this story is it's interesting because
Speaker 1: it's a real life story that mirrors something that is
Speaker 1: um a popular misconception. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is in the story you have Tumonier who had a
Speaker 1: shop in Paris. Uh. He had lots of these different machines,
Speaker 1: eighty of them working at a time, and Taylor's people
Speaker 1: who sewed by hand, stormed his store and destroyed some
Speaker 1: of the machinery because they didn't want to be put
Speaker 1: out of a job. And the reason why I say
Speaker 1: this is interesting is that there's a story that we
Speaker 1: have told on tech stuff before that is erroneous and
Speaker 1: uh and in fact I have been guilty of of
Speaker 1: pushing this forward. The idea of sabotage being named after sabo,
Speaker 1: as in the French word for shoe. The story is
Speaker 1: that you had often it was told about weavers who
Speaker 1: came in and threw their shoes into large mechanized looms
Speaker 1: in order to foul the workings and destroy them. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, that's not necessarily true. The first the
Speaker 1: first appearance of the word sabotage doesn't come until in
Speaker 1: the written word, as far as I can tell, until
Speaker 1: which tells me that this incident, which happened in around
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, could have given birth to a
Speaker 1: word involving tailors that would have replaced sabotage, and they
Speaker 1: just didn't capitalize on it. I want it to include
Speaker 1: Timonier somehow I got totally Timoniate today at work, walked
Speaker 1: in and they just ambushed me. Yeah. So they came
Speaker 1: and destroyed his shop and he had to flee. And
Speaker 1: he did give financial backing, uh so that he could
Speaker 1: continue his work and develop new machines. But unfortunately, uh
Speaker 1: and he got some additional patents as well, both in
Speaker 1: France and and Britain. But the revolution kind of caused
Speaker 1: his legacy to get put on the back burner. Yet
Speaker 1: there were some important things that people were attending to
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, not so much with the let's
Speaker 1: make machines. Now, we've got an American inventor coming up next,
Speaker 1: so let's just take a moment to go America. Well,
Speaker 1: and he becomes very important in the patent battles. So
Speaker 1: this is Walter Hunt you're talking about here. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he made a machine that it created a lock stitch.
Speaker 1: It used to thread sources, very similar to the bobbing
Speaker 1: and school method you would see modern machines. Um and
Speaker 1: this you know, of course, was different than the single
Speaker 1: thread chain stitch of Timoni. A successful machines and he
Speaker 1: kind of was a busy bee he had a lot
Speaker 1: of inventions going at the same time, and so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like this sewing machine was his baby and he
Speaker 1: had really put his heart and soul into it. He
Speaker 1: was kind of like, no, no, he's ever gonna be
Speaker 1: interested in this, and he sold it. So he sold
Speaker 1: the patent off to he didn't even have the patent.
Speaker 1: He just I go, that's right, he didn't even patent
Speaker 1: this invention. He's like, yeah, I could use the money.
Speaker 1: He sold it to a man named George a aerosmith
Speaker 1: and was basically like, yeah, well, you know, I'll fund
Speaker 1: some other projects with whatever I make off of this.
Speaker 1: It's not that important. Um. As we said, he comes
Speaker 1: up later and becomes very important to remember him. And
Speaker 1: we'll also point out his machine was one that Jonathan
Speaker 1: referenced earlier that would only go in straight lines. You
Speaker 1: couldn't really work curves with it, right, so that that
Speaker 1: certainly limits its usefulness. Uh. Now, we also have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge the fact that there's a challenge in really talking
Speaker 1: about the history of the sewing machine because of an
Speaker 1: event that happened in that the mid eighteen hundreds, early
Speaker 1: to mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah, we had a little bit
Speaker 1: of a fire in the patent office. Yeah, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, patents are flammable. Yes, some one had patented
Speaker 1: the the the not the inflammable that would also be flammable,
Speaker 1: but the impossible to burn patent. Yeah, And it wasn't
Speaker 1: a time where they were making tons of backups. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like you find ELLT and you go
Speaker 1: on your way. Because we're still in the thousands. They
Speaker 1: haven't really gotten their game figured out yet, right, not
Speaker 1: to mention the fact that they're making Making duplicates is
Speaker 1: no easy task at this time, so they thought, well,
Speaker 1: it's safe enough. Yeah, that fire was in eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: so they really did not have a plan in place
Speaker 1: to keep duplicate copies. And as a consequence, there are
Speaker 1: actually a lot some sources will say that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of partial patent documents that still
Speaker 1: exists that like they mentioned a needle, or they mentioned
Speaker 1: something sewing related, but like the attribution portion of the
Speaker 1: document has been too damaged and they don't know who
Speaker 1: filed it. So there could be families out there that
Speaker 1: could have, for all we know, inherited great wealth. But
Speaker 1: we'll never know because the capriciousness of fire robbed them
Speaker 1: of their place in history. Fire and it's ways possibly
Speaker 1: on Martha's vineyard. In eighteen forty two, we've got John J. Greenoff,
Speaker 1: who is the first guy, first American, to get a
Speaker 1: patent for the sewing machine that we have a record
Speaker 1: of anyway. Um, so even though he made his invention
Speaker 1: after Hunt had, Hunt had not patented it, and as
Speaker 1: you have in your notes here, the aerosmith apparently never
Speaker 1: got around the patenting it either. So, uh, this is
Speaker 1: the first one in the American patent system. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: there was no replication of his He basically kind of
Speaker 1: was one and done. Yes, So he made a prototype
Speaker 1: and then not a production model. Yeah, there's we don't
Speaker 1: know if he didn't get funding or if he just
Speaker 1: abandoned the idea and moved on to something else. But
Speaker 1: it was only a year later when the second U. S.
Speaker 1: Patent for a sewing machine came about, and that was
Speaker 1: issued to Benjamin W. Bean, which is a great name,
Speaker 1: I know. Um, and he created a unique development and
Speaker 1: that his machine was the first that actually fed the
Speaker 1: fabrics through gears. So for the stitchers in the house,
Speaker 1: all three of us, um that's similar to feed dogs,
Speaker 1: and if you don't stitch, what a feed dog is.
Speaker 1: If you've ever looked at a sewing machine, you may
Speaker 1: see these two. They almost looked like little feet that
Speaker 1: come up and kind of kick at your fabric as
Speaker 1: you're showing, and they have rigid edges and that's kind
Speaker 1: of pulling your fabric through as you go right, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to put through as much effort, you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about misguiding the fabric. So it
Speaker 1: helps feed the fabric through as you're stitching. Yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: it creates great drama and it eats fabric, but not
Speaker 1: very often. Um and his also had a clamp mechanism
Speaker 1: to attach it to a table, so that was also
Speaker 1: a new development. Uh, and there are still machines made
Speaker 1: to do that. Also that year, in eighteen forty three,
Speaker 1: we got George H. Corliss, who uh you know, he
Speaker 1: was also a busy body making making a steam engine.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. We did a full episode in Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff on steam engine. So if you guys are are
Speaker 1: big into that and you really want to know about
Speaker 1: the development of the steam engine, here's a here's an
Speaker 1: interesting little fact. The original steam engines didn't push with steam.
Speaker 1: They rather would pull by letting steam condense and create
Speaker 1: a vacuum, thus pulling a piston down rather than pushing
Speaker 1: a piston out. But we go into full detail and
Speaker 1: tech stuff, so I don't need to redo the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It is exciting, it's actually not cool, it's actually quite hot,
Speaker 1: but but ump up. So Cordless had what's considered the
Speaker 1: third u S sewing machine patents. His performed what is
Speaker 1: called a saddle stitch, which is a specialized stitch that's
Speaker 1: used to this day to join leather together. Uh, it
Speaker 1: kind of keeps it all stable. If anybody has ever
Speaker 1: tried to sew with leather, if you've had like a
Speaker 1: leather pouch or anything, Uh, it can present some challenges
Speaker 1: in terms of how it because it's so rugged usually
Speaker 1: and tough, it will chew on threads and or even
Speaker 1: if you have a lacing, the lacing even though it's leather,
Speaker 1: also we'll kind of get chewed up over time. So
Speaker 1: a saddle stitch kind of gives you a tighter stitch
Speaker 1: and it prevents some of that friction. Okay, cool, And
Speaker 1: then also just a year later in eighteen forty four,
Speaker 1: we've got James Rogers getting the fourth US sewing machine pad.
Speaker 1: And you may all wonder why we're covering every single patent.
Speaker 1: The Patent Wars will make all clear. Everybody's gonna be
Speaker 1: really apparent, and it's it's it's important because again we're
Speaker 1: trying to illustrate the fact that a lot of these
Speaker 1: patents were not revolutionary devices that completely reinvented the machine.
Speaker 1: They were sometimes incremental improvements that had a remarkable difference
Speaker 1: from earlier machines, but it was one tiny element, right,
Speaker 1: not necessarily a full reworking. Yeah. So yeah, James Rogers
Speaker 1: patent was really only had a tiny change to beans design,
Speaker 1: and that was that the gears were kind of in
Speaker 1: a different place and that allowed him to be able
Speaker 1: to design a different needle that was shaped a little
Speaker 1: more simply and would be easier to replicate. Um. And
Speaker 1: so pretty much every patent that came after this used
Speaker 1: this simpler set up that built on Bean's design, So
Speaker 1: it really set a precedent here. But now we're going
Speaker 1: to the star of the show. Okay, who's the star
Speaker 1: of the show because not being a big sewing machine guy,
Speaker 1: but you watch Schoolhouse Rock growing Up? Right, I did
Speaker 1: he was in it? Was he? Yeah, in some mother
Speaker 1: Necessity episode. I'll have to go watch my DVDs. Alias
Speaker 1: can you help me with my sewing? So it's an
Speaker 1: alias here. We're talking about Elias Howe Jr. All right,
Speaker 1: And there's even a play on his name where he
Speaker 1: tells her he's gonna fix everything and she says alias
Speaker 1: how And it's very witty to the sewing nerds in right,
Speaker 1: all three of your three of us. So Elias how
Speaker 1: was born in Spencer, Massachusetts in eighteen nineteen. Uh, and
Speaker 1: when he was a teenager, he decided to go and
Speaker 1: seek his fortune as a machinist, which was a brand
Speaker 1: new job in the Industrial Revolution. Yeah, he was kind
Speaker 1: of he had some bravado. He was not afraid of
Speaker 1: kind of breaking out on his own and making his
Speaker 1: way in the world. He certainly didn't appear to be
Speaker 1: shy once we get into that. Noars, Oh, he was
Speaker 1: a very smart man. Yeah, so he's going to Uh
Speaker 1: he ends up as a machinist overhearing some talk about
Speaker 1: the idea of of a sewing machine and starts to
Speaker 1: kind of apply his own ingenuity. How would I achieve
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. So he's important to remember, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he um So, he was granted the fifth U S.
Speaker 1: Patent in September of eighteen six. And it's one of
Speaker 1: those things that I have to laugh because every year
Speaker 1: when September comes around, you see the today on this day,
Speaker 1: Elias how invented the sewing machine, and I'm like, back
Speaker 1: up the truck. Not entirely accurate, right, It's like like
Speaker 1: you know Edison invented the light bulb, all right, No,
Speaker 1: as an improved and not a Eureka moment where it
Speaker 1: comes from nowhere, although he did sometimes say that like
Speaker 1: he had it kind of fully universally on his own.
Speaker 1: That's very tesla like to Yeah. Um so, this was
Speaker 1: patent number four thousand, seven fifty in the United States,
Speaker 1: you know, the previous one we gave. The number two
Speaker 1: was the British patent. So and in both cases you
Speaker 1: see that these are very very early on during the
Speaker 1: patent offices existence. Yeah, they're numbering schemes were kind of
Speaker 1: neck and neck in terms of where they were at
Speaker 1: in terms of um uh accession order. Um So, this
Speaker 1: patent was actually his second version of the machine that
Speaker 1: he patented. He had another prototype a year before that
Speaker 1: was capable of sewing, but he um, he fine tuned
Speaker 1: it a little bit more. And house patent is very
Speaker 1: important because it makes five very specific claims about how
Speaker 1: the machine is going to work, and they come up
Speaker 1: a lot in court battles like yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: where I was talking about how you can make claims
Speaker 1: within a patent and those claims will protect elements of
Speaker 1: your invention. And claims can be everything from specific physical
Speaker 1: uh mechanical ways that the machine works to UH specific
Speaker 1: method like an implementation. We see that to day in
Speaker 1: ways that are are less um. They're they're more difficult
Speaker 1: to understand because if you're talking about a physical machine,
Speaker 1: you can say the physical machine does it in this way,
Speaker 1: and you can see whether or not the machine is
Speaker 1: actually doing it in that way. When we talk about today,
Speaker 1: we're talking about stuff like you know, resizing images by
Speaker 1: pinching or or moving your fingers further apart from each other,
Speaker 1: and it starts to get a little wibbly wobbly time
Speaker 1: you whiney when you are trying to say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is a method that is unique that
Speaker 1: I came up with and no one else can use
Speaker 1: it unless they come through me. That's uh, it's one
Speaker 1: of those evolutions of the patent office that we're still
Speaker 1: trying to kind of reconcile. Yeah, it's not all black
Speaker 1: and white, which is why you get into these huge
Speaker 1: battles and arguments and things go to court and you
Speaker 1: hear about Apple having to pay money, but then Samsung
Speaker 1: has to pay all the money, right, Yeah, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it just sometimes everyone just ends up like, well, let's
Speaker 1: just all say we gave each other the money when
Speaker 1: we supposed to call today. But anyway, there were these
Speaker 1: five elements. Did you want to cover any of them?
Speaker 1: You have all of them written out here they are,
Speaker 1: and they're written out long because I cut and pasted
Speaker 1: it from another document, but I'll kind of do the
Speaker 1: short version. So the first was he describes how he's
Speaker 1: going to form a seam by using a curve needle
Speaker 1: to go through the cloth and um a bobbin to
Speaker 1: kind of connect to that and and make the stitch,
Speaker 1: similar to how we've talked about before this to thread version.
Speaker 1: The second is how the thread is going to get
Speaker 1: lifted and passed through the needle eye. There's a lifting
Speaker 1: rod involved. That's very important. The third is how the
Speaker 1: thread is going to be passed out by the shuttle,
Speaker 1: so it has a lot to do with the tension
Speaker 1: and how it passes through at a consistent rate. The
Speaker 1: fourth is um how a couple of levers go together
Speaker 1: and enact. They're sort of mechanisms on the string or
Speaker 1: the thread that's involved. And the fifth is how the
Speaker 1: cloth is held in place by a baster plate, uh,
Speaker 1: which is still a thing that happens like now, if
Speaker 1: you drop your foot down on your machine, it's kind
Speaker 1: of pressing the cloth onto the plate of your machine.
Speaker 1: That's that keeps it from going just flying away when
Speaker 1: you're trying to stitch on it very important as I
Speaker 1: understand it, in the sewing process. Yes, most machines made
Speaker 1: today won't won't stitch at all if you don't have
Speaker 1: to press your foot down because they know they'll just
Speaker 1: be wasting everyone's time. So how didn't meet with immediate
Speaker 1: success with this design? Actually, he tried for a while
Speaker 1: to get people here in the United States excited about it,
Speaker 1: and no one seemed to really give him much attention.
Speaker 1: So he ended up selling the patent rights to a
Speaker 1: or at least the British patent rights, I should say
Speaker 1: to William Thomas for the princely sum of two fifty
Speaker 1: British pounds sterling. Uh and uh, I like, I like
Speaker 1: the other. Note here he also adapted his machine to
Speaker 1: make umbrellas and corsets. That's fabulous. Yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: in the market. We're both right now. So well, when
Speaker 1: we talked about this on History, Tracy was saying, I
Speaker 1: never thought about it before, but umbrella's, in course, it's
Speaker 1: really are quite a lot alike. And that you know,
Speaker 1: you have a casing and you have these rigid elements
Speaker 1: that passed through it and hold it all in shape.
Speaker 1: And at this point it would have been all steelbone,
Speaker 1: course tree. So it was very similar to an umbrella, right,
Speaker 1: except that the main difference, at least in my experience,
Speaker 1: is that it's a relief to have an umbrella and
Speaker 1: a relief to get rid of a corset. So don't
Speaker 1: get it started. Of course, it's are good for you
Speaker 1: if they're well fitted. They protect your back, they give
Speaker 1: you a great posture. Those tight lasers are a whole
Speaker 1: different universe. Yeah. I worked at the Georgia Renaissance Festival
Speaker 1: so I have a very specific experience of watching ladies. Know,
Speaker 1: a good foundation courset will keep your clothes in place.
Speaker 1: It holds up all those Victorian layers if it's a
Speaker 1: Victorian courset. So I'm kind of going from the time
Speaker 1: period we're talking about. They're they're not mystery torture devices.
Speaker 1: Well really, we're not intended for that. You will clearly
Speaker 1: need to have you come in and give a talk
Speaker 1: because because those ladies, let me tell there is a
Speaker 1: lot of technology and physics and a courset either got
Speaker 1: to support from below or from above. It's fabulous. Well,
Speaker 1: moving on in the the evolution of the sewing machine,
Speaker 1: we move up to and the sixth US sewing machine
Speaker 1: patent from John A. Bradshaw, which was a little bit snarky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he talks about How's patent design in his patent and
Speaker 1: kind of says that it's bungling and it's an incumbrance
Speaker 1: to the action of the machine when he talks about
Speaker 1: the needle. So not only can How not get manufacturers
Speaker 1: interested in his device, he has the next UH patent
Speaker 1: UH petitioner completely dis him, totally trash in his work
Speaker 1: even while he's building on it. He's still kind of
Speaker 1: like he was onto something, but I really have this
Speaker 1: thing figured out, Like, okay, well I can tell you
Speaker 1: why it didn't do great with the manufacturers. Wonderful. So
Speaker 1: eighteen nine we get how coming back to the United States, Uh,
Speaker 1: he had gone to England, like we said to say,
Speaker 1: to sell the British patent off. And when he comes
Speaker 1: back he sees that that that what had been kind
Speaker 1: of a quiet, little tiny niche industry was starting to
Speaker 1: take off. Yeah. The seventh patent for the sewing machine
Speaker 1: have been issued to Charles Morey and Joseph B. Johnson
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty nine, and they were really some of
Speaker 1: the first two that were like, we need to start
Speaker 1: selling this and making a bunch of them. And even
Speaker 1: before they received their patent, they were selling machine, which
Speaker 1: is perfectly fine. I mean, it's not like you don't
Speaker 1: have to have a In fact, you often we'll see
Speaker 1: today things like patent pending where people are trying to
Speaker 1: capitalize on an idea because patent applications and patent grants
Speaker 1: can take a long time, especially today now that you
Speaker 1: have uh an exponentially larger number of applications coming into
Speaker 1: the patent ofvice than you did way back in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah, there were some other people that
Speaker 1: were trying to improve on Marie and Johnson's machine in
Speaker 1: the middle of eighteen forty nine. So that same year
Speaker 1: they got their patent, there was a man named Jotham
Speaker 1: s Conan, and he was issued a patent based on
Speaker 1: a modification he made to their machine which just kind
Speaker 1: of altered the way that the cloth was held during
Speaker 1: the stitching. But his never really went anywhere. He didn't manufacture,
Speaker 1: he didn't sell. But that same day that he got
Speaker 1: his patent, another important person was getting a patent, John
Speaker 1: Batch Elder. So yeah, this was the continuous sewing mechanism
Speaker 1: and at an endless belt to feed the cloth into
Speaker 1: the machine. Yeah, thank you John, to make sure that
Speaker 1: you don't have to put in all that work yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But the really important thing is who Batch Elder sold
Speaker 1: his patent too. And here we come up to the
Speaker 1: first name in this podcast that I recognize. I am
Speaker 1: Singer the Singer sewing machine. Everybody knows that well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, my my my grandmother and my my mom
Speaker 1: both had Singer sewing machines. In fact, that there's the
Speaker 1: both of them still exist. And my parents it's as
Speaker 1: it's like a little uh table that's next to the
Speaker 1: front door of their house. But it's an old singer
Speaker 1: sewing machine that that's operated by by pedal. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the one of those names that I think
Speaker 1: most people associate it with sewing pretty quick. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean it's still a name. So yep, they're
Speaker 1: still making. You don't hear about a lot of how
Speaker 1: machines these days, but the singers still going. So now
Speaker 1: we're to the argument phase. It's time for us to
Speaker 1: take another quick break, but we'll be back with more
Speaker 1: about the sewing machine in just a moment. We finally
Speaker 1: reached the point now where things have come to ahead.
Speaker 1: We've got the the snippy little patent applications out of
Speaker 1: the way. Now it's time to really get down to
Speaker 1: fisticuffs legally speaking. And uh it's the eighteen fifties where
Speaker 1: we get that first enormous patent war. And it all
Speaker 1: has to do with the fact that these different little
Speaker 1: elements that have been improved upon over time, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of arguments about who actually had ownership of
Speaker 1: those ideas and in what implementations and who was owed
Speaker 1: money by whom, and it got ugly, really really ugly.
Speaker 1: So there was a a man by the name of
Speaker 1: Allen B. Wilson, and he in eighteen fifty was working
Speaker 1: on this lock stitch machine very similar to the modern machine,
Speaker 1: and his mechanism could also go forward and backwards, which
Speaker 1: we had not encountered before. Uh. And he applied for
Speaker 1: his patent. He had made a second prototype model, and
Speaker 1: the people that owned the brand shop patent from eight
Speaker 1: got wind of this, and we're like, hold on a minute.
Speaker 1: For four Uh, we owned some of the concepts you're using.
Speaker 1: The double pointed shuttle that made up a part of
Speaker 1: his machine was something that was part of their patent, uh,
Speaker 1: they claimed, And that claim was not accurate. It was
Speaker 1: complete bunk. So however, they think, well, let's throw a
Speaker 1: wrench into this one. However, they had dollars and Wilson didn't,
Speaker 1: so he could not fight them. So we get down
Speaker 1: to using the old idea of well, if if we can't,
Speaker 1: if we can't suppress this idea, one way, we can
Speaker 1: just kind of run them out because we've got we've
Speaker 1: got a larger reserve of cash. Yes, so, uh, he
Speaker 1: had to give up half of his claim to a
Speaker 1: P Kline and Edward Lee, who at that point held
Speaker 1: the Bradshaw patent, and that was in late November, and
Speaker 1: then after a little while he just sold them the
Speaker 1: rest of his interest. He didn't want to mess with
Speaker 1: it anymore. He retained very limited rights. That's a very
Speaker 1: sad story there, where essentially he was beaten down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really had the goods in terms of his invention
Speaker 1: to have been the singer of this story in terms
Speaker 1: of name recognition, but because he just didn't have the
Speaker 1: means to fight anybody that made a claim against him
Speaker 1: and vanished into history and to repsalt into the wound,
Speaker 1: they would use his name in official advertisements. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: recognize that he had invented something really pretty exciting because
Speaker 1: it could do these things that previous machines couldn't, And
Speaker 1: so their advertisements went a by Wilson's sewing Machine, the
Speaker 1: best and only practical sewing machine not larger than a
Speaker 1: lady's workbox, for the trifling sum of thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1: So not only does he not get the benefit of
Speaker 1: actually owning this device that he invented, he then has
Speaker 1: the indignity of having his name used in the advertising
Speaker 1: while this other company makes money off of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really did get shafted. So meanwhile, we've got to
Speaker 1: lie as How who He's no dummy, No, he's witnessing
Speaker 1: this and realizing some stuff is going down. Maybe I
Speaker 1: need to maybe I need to kind of circle my
Speaker 1: little my proverbial wagons here. So he decides that he's
Speaker 1: going to protect the rights to royalties from his inventions. Uh,
Speaker 1: and anything that could trace elements of the products being
Speaker 1: sold back to one of his patents, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: from the Branshaw model on. They really were working on
Speaker 1: How's machine and kind of making twee tweaks to that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he really got angry because he saw Isaac Singers,
Speaker 1: one of Isaac Singer's sons, demonstrating their sewing machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh he said, huh, some of these elements look
Speaker 1: awfully familiar. So of course he ends up doing the
Speaker 1: responsible thing, you know. He contacts Singer and says, um, actually,
Speaker 1: I own the patent for this, this machinery, this particular
Speaker 1: piece that you're using, and uh so by law, um,
Speaker 1: I should really receive a royalty payment because you're you're
Speaker 1: using it in you or device and otherwise not not
Speaker 1: compensating me for it, and so um, I'd really like
Speaker 1: that two thousand dollars you owe me, and Singer, being
Speaker 1: the very level headed professional businessman, uh, decided to um
Speaker 1: physically threatened How. Yeah. He Singer was known for having
Speaker 1: a really bad temper. He did some really seedy things
Speaker 1: just in business outside of this, and when it came
Speaker 1: to this, there was one incident where he allegedly threatened
Speaker 1: and nearly threw how down the steps outside his office.
Speaker 1: Like there were fisticuffs. It wasn't just yelling and through lawyers,
Speaker 1: they were physically I get the feeling that Singer is
Speaker 1: very much like the character from from Parts of the
Speaker 1: Caribbean who just says, you know, they're more like guidelines.
Speaker 1: It's he's he's not not really one to necessarily be
Speaker 1: too concerned with the actual rules of law. You know,
Speaker 1: that actor that plays Jackmi Gibb would make a great
Speaker 1: Isaac Singer, he would, But How did a super smart thing.
Speaker 1: This is where we really realized that this man was
Speaker 1: just really smart and very widely so. He like some
Speaker 1: of these previous sad stories. Really didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money to get into a lot of legal battles,
Speaker 1: but he figures out a way to finance some litigation.
Speaker 1: He sells half of his interest in his patent to
Speaker 1: a man named George Bliss, and Bliss manufactured machines. He
Speaker 1: built them as being House patent, even though they were
Speaker 1: pretty different from House initial design. But the money that
Speaker 1: how made off of this partnership was basically put into
Speaker 1: his litigation machine and he just started fighting people. Oh
Speaker 1: got you. So, so what he was doing was he
Speaker 1: had made this partnership. He was making money off the partnership.
Speaker 1: Bliss is making money because of Howe's name. How is
Speaker 1: making money because of the partnership with Bliss. He ends
Speaker 1: up spending that money directly on lawyers to attack people
Speaker 1: who are actually infringing upon his patents. Yeah, he went
Speaker 1: after Singer with great vigor. But there we're a lot
Speaker 1: of other people that were also in this mix. Uh,
Speaker 1: two of them Laroux and Blodgett. That we're a pair,
Speaker 1: that we're making a firm, that we're making machines that
Speaker 1: he thought infringed. There was actually a judgment in that
Speaker 1: case in House favor that was the first one to
Speaker 1: be settled, and once it it was like the first
Speaker 1: of the dominoes, because then everybody else kind of panicked.
Speaker 1: He went, oh, wow, he really has a case. Right.
Speaker 1: When you've got a precedent set like that, then the
Speaker 1: it becomes clear that's going to get harder and harder
Speaker 1: to win a case. Uh. You know when a defense
Speaker 1: against such a claim, If the claim has already been
Speaker 1: held up in court in one instance, then the fear
Speaker 1: is that it will be the same in future ones.
Speaker 1: And it's cheaper to settle it is to go through
Speaker 1: the process and then maybe have to be forced to
Speaker 1: to hand over a larger reward in a court decision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and how was basically happy to any settlements, be like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's set up a license. Like he was willing to
Speaker 1: deal with them. It wasn't like he wanted to prevent
Speaker 1: other people from making their machine. This is very different
Speaker 1: from we see today when we were talking about similarities.
Speaker 1: But today we got a lot of what we call
Speaker 1: them patentrols. These are the folks who will get a
Speaker 1: patent and then either they don't make anything on their own,
Speaker 1: or they make something very very tiny, and then they
Speaker 1: just kind of sit around and wait for folks to
Speaker 1: infringe upon them. They threatened litigation in hopes of a settlement. Um.
Speaker 1: But but what a lot of people have said about
Speaker 1: the recent patent wars is that the patent system needs
Speaker 1: to create an incentive for patent holders to license their
Speaker 1: ideas for royalties, which is exactly what hal was doing
Speaker 1: back in this day. Yeah. I mean he really saw
Speaker 1: the benefit of like, hey, it would be a pain,
Speaker 1: and that took us for me to set up my
Speaker 1: own manufacturing plant and be churning these out. But all
Speaker 1: these people are already set up. I can just cut
Speaker 1: deals with them. Everybody wins. Yeah, except not so much. No, No,
Speaker 1: I got I got ugly again. Apparently Singer was not done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't settle, and so that case dragged on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it got ugly in public. To write, you got
Speaker 1: this great little story about to to advertisements that ran
Speaker 1: on the same page of the New York Daily Tribune
Speaker 1: that tell very different stories. Yeah, the first one reads
Speaker 1: the sewing machine. It has been recently decided by the
Speaker 1: United States Court that Elias how Jr. Of Number three
Speaker 1: zero five Broadway was the originator of the sewing machine
Speaker 1: now extensively used. Call at his office and see forty
Speaker 1: of them in constant use upon cloth, leather, etcetera, and
Speaker 1: judge for yourselves as to their practicality. Also see a
Speaker 1: certified copy from the records of the United States Court
Speaker 1: of the injunction against Singers machine so called, which is conclusive.
Speaker 1: You that want sewing machines, be cautious how you purchased
Speaker 1: them of others than him or those licensed under him.
Speaker 1: Else the law will compel you to pay twice over. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we have the other advertisement sewing machines. For the last
Speaker 1: two years, Alias how Junior of Massachusetts, has been threatening
Speaker 1: suits and injunctions against all the world who make, use
Speaker 1: or sells sewing machines. We have sold many machines, are
Speaker 1: selling them rapidly, and have good right to sell them.
Speaker 1: The public do not acknowledge Mr Howe's pretensions, and for
Speaker 1: the best reasons. One machines made according to House patent
Speaker 1: are of no practical use. He tried several years without
Speaker 1: being able to introduce one too. It is notorious, especially
Speaker 1: in New York, that how was not the original inventor
Speaker 1: of the machine combining the needle and shuttle and that
Speaker 1: his claim to that is not valid. Finally, we make
Speaker 1: and sell the best sewing machines. So yeah, there's um,
Speaker 1: there's some vitriolic I love how It's it's like a
Speaker 1: sewing machine telenovelo. There's a lot of soap opera going
Speaker 1: on here. And to make it even more soap opera ish,
Speaker 1: How went after Singer for libel. But he also went
Speaker 1: after the New York Daily Tribune for printing his advertisement
Speaker 1: in the first place. So we now have How going
Speaker 1: after Singer both for patent infringement and reliabel. Yeah, fantastic,
Speaker 1: just to make their relationship that much more delightful and huggy.
Speaker 1: So at this point Singer, Singer wakes up and just says,
Speaker 1: you know, you know you were right. I was wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna be the bigger man walk away right,
Speaker 1: not even a little. He instead just kind of goes
Speaker 1: into a rage suitable to be played only by Daniel
Speaker 1: day Lewis. Decides he's going to destroy How so this
Speaker 1: is butcher Bill totally totally. He decides he is going
Speaker 1: to seek out every scrap of evidence on earth. He
Speaker 1: even sought out sources in Europe and China, to prove
Speaker 1: that house design was not original. Uh. And the key
Speaker 1: here is that the wording in house patent was really
Speaker 1: his protection because he had patented the combination of the
Speaker 1: shuttle and the one I and the I pointed needle
Speaker 1: and how they would work together. But he never claimed
Speaker 1: to have invented either of those elements, and so his
Speaker 1: patent remained accurate and correct and not infringing on anyone
Speaker 1: else because he didn't say I invented the needle invent
Speaker 1: at the shuttle. He said I invented this combination of
Speaker 1: these two elements that work in this particular way. Correct,
Speaker 1: and that is completely valid patent law. So again, if
Speaker 1: you come up with a new way to use existing
Speaker 1: technology that you you can claim as an improvement over others,
Speaker 1: there's nothing stopping you from getting a patent on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can patent an interaction of things. They don't have
Speaker 1: to be physical things necessarily. Uh. However, if you remember
Speaker 1: back when we talked about Walter Hunt, who was the
Speaker 1: guy who invented a pretty workable sewing machine but then
Speaker 1: kind of sold it off and abandoned it, he never
Speaker 1: he never patented his particular idea. Singer found him of course,
Speaker 1: because he thought that was his best shot at bringing
Speaker 1: How down and showing that How is not, in fact
Speaker 1: the first person to invent a working so machine. So
Speaker 1: he I guess he just wanted to retroactively magically get
Speaker 1: a precursor patent that couldn't have existed because William Hunt
Speaker 1: never patented his detention. That is exactly what he tried
Speaker 1: to do. So this this reminds me. I mean, there
Speaker 1: there are entire books written about some of the more
Speaker 1: ridiculous things that have happened in patent law around the world,
Speaker 1: but particularly in the United States. So another good example
Speaker 1: of some shenanigans that went on with patents involves Tesla
Speaker 1: and Radio because Tesla was awarded the patent the United
Speaker 1: States UH the same year that Marconi actually filed for
Speaker 1: a patent. In fact, he received the patent a month
Speaker 1: before or two months before Marconi had filed for a
Speaker 1: patent in the US, and then famously, several years later
Speaker 1: the Patent office awarded they went back on their decision,
Speaker 1: took the patent away from Tesla and awarded it to Marconi.
Speaker 1: So even though that happens later, you know this this
Speaker 1: the events we're talking about here are earlier in the timeline.
Speaker 1: It's not unusual for us to see these kind of
Speaker 1: crazy political dealings. Yeah, and again remember, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: this wasn't a time when everything was duplicated and there
Speaker 1: was a trail of what had happened, when it would
Speaker 1: be easy to fudge things. So it's it's reasonable that
Speaker 1: Singer could think that he was going to finagle something
Speaker 1: out of this. So what what happens due to this
Speaker 1: this claim? Well, first Singer hires an engineer, William Whiting, uh,
Speaker 1: to basically help resurrect Hunt's designs. He's gonna go back
Speaker 1: to those original blueprints and schematics and he's going to
Speaker 1: build it to prove that this one works and it's
Speaker 1: great and how you got nothing? Uh? And uh, this
Speaker 1: Scientific American at the time, as this was all bubbling up,
Speaker 1: actually published a pretty uh scathing article about Hunt, a
Speaker 1: sting because he was like, oh, yeah, I did invent
Speaker 1: the sewing machine. Now that he sees that there's money
Speaker 1: in it, and this is a litigious thing. They basically
Speaker 1: said that his claims were rusty, he didn't he had
Speaker 1: no hat in this game, Like what was he trying
Speaker 1: to do? And no legal basis really, but there was
Speaker 1: a trial with the Patent Office. There were hundreds of
Speaker 1: pages of testimony. I mean it went on forever. Singer
Speaker 1: dragged everybody in that he could think of that had
Speaker 1: ever touched anything that vaguely resembled a sewing machine. UM
Speaker 1: Patent Commissioner Charles Mason, though, ruled in favor of Elias
Speaker 1: Howe on eighteen fifty four. And the big part of
Speaker 1: Hunt's loss, even though he really did have a pretty
Speaker 1: good working machine, was that he didn't do anything to
Speaker 1: patent it or protected eighteen years prior. So, uh, the
Speaker 1: Patent Office can't can't rule in favor of someone who
Speaker 1: hasn't actually gone through the process. Yeah. Yeah, The commissioners like,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to do? You didn't you don't
Speaker 1: have these rights. Hunt did try to appeal to the
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, but that did
Speaker 1: not go so well either. Mason's ruling was upheld. So
Speaker 1: then how emboldened by this victory, decides to start going
Speaker 1: after other people that he has has perceived as infringing
Speaker 1: against his patents. Yep, everybody that was selling a Singer
Speaker 1: machine he went after. Wow, that was a lot of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he asked for preliminary injunctions against all of them
Speaker 1: to shut down sales while they went through their court cases.
Speaker 1: So he goes through this process, bringing it all the
Speaker 1: way to courts when necessary. Um, and the they what
Speaker 1: happened the poor singer at this point, not not really
Speaker 1: poor singer because he's kind of a jerk. But but
Speaker 1: you've got you've got how going after the people who
Speaker 1: are selling singer sewing machines or incorporating them. Then what
Speaker 1: they're doing instead, you know, they get attacked by how
Speaker 1: they turned around. They attack singers saying, you got us
Speaker 1: into this. Yeah, you had no right to sell us
Speaker 1: the licenses that you sold us because you didn't have
Speaker 1: a right to it. Didn't own the technology that you
Speaker 1: were licensing to us. And and that's why we're in trouble. Yea.
Speaker 1: So it's so litigious. By eighteen fifty four, keep in
Speaker 1: mind this started in the eighteen fifty By eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: Singer and how settle their lawsuit and it's announced in
Speaker 1: Scientific American. This is a big deal. This is not
Speaker 1: tiny news. This is like this is just like when
Speaker 1: you go on to Google news and you see like
Speaker 1: Samsung and Apple settle lawsuit. That's that's equivalent. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like it reminds me of when those first
Speaker 1: like headlines were happening about no Steve Jobs and Bill
Speaker 1: Gates actually like each other. It's fine, and it's like
Speaker 1: that level of wait, what we didn't think that's how
Speaker 1: this worked, except there was very little pushing down of
Speaker 1: stairs in any of them. Right, well, what what's really
Speaker 1: cool about this? Okay, so this didn't end all litigation.
Speaker 1: There was still some continuing. But by eighteen fifty six
Speaker 1: we get the president of Grover and Baker, which was
Speaker 1: one of the companies involved in the suits, that were, uh,
Speaker 1: that we're involving Elias How, I feel like we should
Speaker 1: back up because we skipped that. People tried to then
Speaker 1: sue how for improving Uh yeah, so How Basically at
Speaker 1: this point was the you know, the czar of the
Speaker 1: sewing machine in industry. He owned the patent to the
Speaker 1: biggest chunk of it and was licensing those out, and
Speaker 1: he thought, well, you know, I could really tweak that
Speaker 1: original design as well. But every tweak he made other
Speaker 1: people claim they had already made. So then he was
Speaker 1: getting sued by people for patent infringement for improving on
Speaker 1: his original design. Okay, so that's a litigation festival. Basically.
Speaker 1: Now you've got people saying, all right, well, these improvements
Speaker 1: you're making, we've already made and we've already patented. So
Speaker 1: it's become a huge mess. By eighteen fifty six, you
Speaker 1: get the president of Grover and Baker, which was one
Speaker 1: of the companies that was involved in these cases against
Speaker 1: how about these improvements to the original designs and comes
Speaker 1: up with a concept up called the combination, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, these days we would call this a patent pool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a patent pool is essentially when you get a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different stakeholders who all own different patents
Speaker 1: that are involved in the same general technology to essentially
Speaker 1: come to an agreement saying, all right, we're gonna pull
Speaker 1: all these patents together, and as long as we are
Speaker 1: all officially part of this group and we all agree
Speaker 1: to operate by these rules, we're not going to sue
Speaker 1: the pants off each other. Whenever we make an improvement
Speaker 1: to that technology or incorporate that technology into our products.
Speaker 1: Make suring that everyone's getting the royalties that they deserve exactly.
Speaker 1: So the president of Grover and Baker was Orlando B. Potter,
Speaker 1: and he, you know, I feel like he's a person
Speaker 1: that's not very well known historically, but he really deserves
Speaker 1: a lot of kudos because he was really the first
Speaker 1: person to go, hey, you guys, we're only hurting ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're kind of being idiots. And he really established this
Speaker 1: concept of what is now a patent pool. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was like, let's stop, you know, holding up everybody's production.
Speaker 1: Let's stop throwing our money at lawyers. We don't need that.
Speaker 1: We can work this out. Uh. And so he got
Speaker 1: them all to join their forces. They pulled their patents.
Speaker 1: They made one unified combination patent for sewing machines. How
Speaker 1: initially was not on board with this. Well, now, when
Speaker 1: you own a huge chunk of the landscape, then you
Speaker 1: feel like you have the most to lose that kind
Speaker 1: of agreement. He definitely felt that way, but eventually he
Speaker 1: did agree to it. He had made some pretty heavy
Speaker 1: stipulations and the other parties agreed. Basically, he was going
Speaker 1: to get a five dollar royalty on every sewing machine
Speaker 1: that was sold in the US, and for every sewing
Speaker 1: machine that was exported, he would get a dollar. Now,
Speaker 1: I remember this is in eighteen fifty six, so these
Speaker 1: are not paltry sums. No, this is this is significant money.
Speaker 1: So in the next eleven years between eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty seven, when How's Patton expired, he made
Speaker 1: more than two million dollars. And that's two million dollars
Speaker 1: in eight hundreds of money. Yeah, that's way more. But
Speaker 1: he would be a kajillionaire. Crazy crazy, I think that
Speaker 1: was accurate estimation there um. And he requested a an
Speaker 1: extension to that patent, but was denied. Patents do, like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, expire, and when they expire, you lose
Speaker 1: that exclusivity. You cannot demand licenses for it. That technology,
Speaker 1: that implementation of that technology then belongs to the public,
Speaker 1: so anyone can create any kind of device using that
Speaker 1: sort of approach um that was originally covered by that
Speaker 1: patent that's now expired. So he doesn't get the extension
Speaker 1: he wanted, and he dies of a broken heart. He
Speaker 1: doesn't really die of a broken heart. His heart was
Speaker 1: broken earlier in his life when his wife died, but
Speaker 1: it did not kill him. To the best of our knowledge, However,
Speaker 1: some say that it did kind of spur his ft
Speaker 1: because he just needed to focus on something else. Um.
Speaker 1: But Singer of course continue to work his magic in
Speaker 1: the sewing machine industry. And now as a consequence, you know,
Speaker 1: he's really the name we remember more than Alliance. How yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you see that name all over. The was exceptional at marketing,
Speaker 1: very much again, kind of like Edison, who was brilliant
Speaker 1: in many ways, and one of the big ones was
Speaker 1: that he was a very smart businessman and marketer. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is again you can see the parallels with modern
Speaker 1: patent wars. Everything from the cooperation of various companies to
Speaker 1: make sure that business can continue, the arguments that patent
Speaker 1: litigation harms innovation, that that pat that's sitting on patents
Speaker 1: harms innovation. These are not new ideas. No, you gotta
Speaker 1: look at you know, early to mid nineteenth century and
Speaker 1: you can see it all there as well. So very
Speaker 1: interesting that there's so much in common with what we
Speaker 1: see today. That wraps up this classic episode about the
Speaker 1: sewing machine. I hope you and joined it. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, reach out to me. On Twitter, the
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
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