Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with text stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and joining me in the studio is special
Speaker 1: guest Holly from Stuff You miss in History class High Holly. Hello, ha,
Speaker 1: I am so glad that you are here too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I've been asking other hosts here at how Stuff
Speaker 1: works if they could sit in as a guest and
Speaker 1: kind of mix things up and find out what they'd
Speaker 1: be interested to talk about in the world of technology. Sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: they don't have a suggestion right. Sometimes they're they're like, no,
Speaker 1: you just tell me what you want to talk about,
Speaker 1: and I think, well, okay, but then it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be like another episode of tech Stuff. But other people
Speaker 1: like Holly come to me with an idea that is phenomenal. See,
Speaker 1: we want to talk about patent wars, and we've talked
Speaker 1: about patent wars on tech stuff before. Pat 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. I mean, when you look at when you
Speaker 1: look at mass production, this is one of the specific
Speaker 1: pieces of technology that makes mass production possible. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about sewing machines. So sewing machines. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: we're 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 stitches,
Speaker 1: and there's uh a lot of that. If any of
Speaker 1: your listeners have listened to the stuffy Masson History class
Speaker 1: episode on this very thing, a lot of this will
Speaker 1: be repeat information. Yeah, but it's just so fascinating how
Speaker 1: completely similar to modern day arguments over tech, these ones
Speaker 1: where I mean, it's it's it's you can draw direct parallels.
Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, when you look at a company trying
Speaker 1: to make a piece of technology as complex essay a
Speaker 1: tablet or a smartphone. Now, a tablet or a smartphone
Speaker 1: by itself is one thing, but it's made up of
Speaker 1: numerous individual components, some of which may not be owned
Speaker 1: by one particular entity. The same thing is true with
Speaker 1: sewing machines, as it turns out, absolutely So before we
Speaker 1: jump into the sordid history of the sewing machine, I
Speaker 1: thought I would remind folks what a patent is. What's
Speaker 1: all about? So patents are that's a set of exclusive
Speaker 1: rights granted by government some form of agency that has
Speaker 1: authority to an inventor or an assignee for the use
Speaker 1: of an invention. Now, an invention does not have to
Speaker 1: be a complete thing all by itself. It could be
Speaker 1: a component of a thing, Like if you were to
Speaker 1: have a full invention, Let's say it's a washing machine.
Speaker 1: Because we've done a tech stuff episode about washing machines,
Speaker 1: and you come up with a way to improve washing
Speaker 1: machines so that they wash clothes, uh more thoroughly or
Speaker 1: without as much bashing around, so the clothing doesn't take
Speaker 1: as much of a beating. And you come up with
Speaker 1: that that improvement and then you patent it. You can
Speaker 1: do that. That's perfectly acceptable, and then any washing machine
Speaker 1: that would use that particular improvement would have to either
Speaker 1: have been made by you or have received your permission
Speaker 1: to use that specific technology. Yes, so patents can be
Speaker 1: for a full invention with all the different components, or
Speaker 1: it can be just a tiny little thing that's an improvement.
Speaker 1: The point of it is, the reason why you would
Speaker 1: want to patent it is that you get those exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to use that technology. Now, in return for that,
Speaker 1: you have to disclose how that technology works. You submit
Speaker 1: a patent application that has a full description of the
Speaker 1: mechanism and the purpose of your invention, and that becomes
Speaker 1: publicly available, and once the patent expires, which they do,
Speaker 1: anyone can access that information and make use of it.
Speaker 1: But during the course of that patent, that the lifespan
Speaker 1: of that patent, it's all you, boss. They got to
Speaker 1: come through you. Yeah, Although that is an interesting one
Speaker 1: related to what we're talking about today, because there were
Speaker 1: several instances on the road to the sewing machine actually
Speaker 1: becoming a fully fledged thing where there were some FIBs
Speaker 1: told in the patent filings so that they could keep
Speaker 1: their proprietary information to themselves, so when people tried to
Speaker 1: replicate them, they did not always work. Right. See, you
Speaker 1: could if you wanted to. If you invented something, there's nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing that requires you to get a patent, you could
Speaker 1: keep it secret and say this magical technology is mine
Speaker 1: and mine alone. But the danger of that, of course,
Speaker 1: is if someone gets hold of it and figures out
Speaker 1: how it works, they could then make the same thing
Speaker 1: with and you would have no protection. Not only could
Speaker 1: they make the same thing, they could file a patent
Speaker 1: for it, and then you would no longer be able
Speaker 1: to use the thing you invented. Yeah, it's all about
Speaker 1: first rites. So as it turns out, and we haven't
Speaker 1: even gotten into the complication of filing for a patent
Speaker 1: in one country versus filing for a paton and another.
Speaker 1: But we we've hemmed in hod long enough about patents.
Speaker 1: Let's start off. Tell me what what was sewing before
Speaker 1: the sewing machine. Well, most people would probably recognize it
Speaker 1: if they thought about pre sewing machines sewing, they would
Speaker 1: think of an needle and thread. But even way before that,
Speaker 1: there were people using bones and sticks to kind of
Speaker 1: poke holes into fabrics. Usually leathers and then they would
Speaker 1: pass a lace through. It was not all one continuous
Speaker 1: thing where the lace was attached to the the boner stick.
Speaker 1: And then they added the eye that circle that the
Speaker 1: whatever you're lacing material passes through. Right. The thing that
Speaker 1: confounds me whenever I have to threaten a needle, many
Speaker 1: people say that I think you either got it or
Speaker 1: you don't. I don't got it. Um, I hope I
Speaker 1: keep it forever because I have a few friends who
Speaker 1: are saying are getting to the age and their eyesight
Speaker 1: isn't letting them keep it anymore. But yeah, so that
Speaker 1: eventually that I was added and people were able to
Speaker 1: do it all in one fell swoop where they poked
Speaker 1: the hole and passed the binding material through, and that
Speaker 1: also developed things like embroidery. But it wasn't really until
Speaker 1: the Industrial Revolution that stitching became mechanized. And even pre
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution in the mid seventeen hundreds, where kind of
Speaker 1: industry was first starting to get seated, is really where
Speaker 1: we started having first people on record actually filing things. Right.
Speaker 1: So you have Charles Wisenthal here who received a patent
Speaker 1: for a needle for a sewing machine, but it had
Speaker 1: a distinct disadvantage and that it was a design for
Speaker 1: a needle for a machine that didn't exist. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: just really felt like he had the needle situation worked
Speaker 1: out and eventually the rest would follow. You've got to
Speaker 1: really nail the needle. Is his approach, which the needle,
Speaker 1: how it came to be where it is today, really
Speaker 1: took a lot of iterations. And his needle um had
Speaker 1: 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 sat 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 scint it's
Speaker 1: it's so delightful and just completely reboth. 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 all that purpose and of certain
Speaker 1: compositions of the nature of Japan or Vanish, 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
Speaker 1: favorite that you went more Welsh. That's all right, that's
Speaker 1: what'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 we 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 first ditching, 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: the arm with the needle, it had 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. Leave a few things
Speaker 1: out of the patent design so that folks don't automatically
Speaker 1: go out there and actually start making one uh. One
Speaker 1: thing about patents, by the way, there's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: your design has to work. It has to it has
Speaker 1: to be reasonably you know, the people at the patent
Speaker 1: office that 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 device
Speaker 1: as we'll be talking about. Correct, Like a lot of
Speaker 1: them will only go in a straight line, but this
Speaker 1: one could handle curves. 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 treating. 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 seven eight. That's another thing that I
Speaker 1: think is interesting. You look at the history of sewing
Speaker 1: machines and you look at those patent numbers and when
Speaker 1: they're still in the four digit range. That's incredible. If
Speaker 1: guys go to the patent I'll go to like Google
Speaker 1: search for patents and look up any patent that's been
Speaker 1: issued over the last couple of years. We're talking in
Speaker 1: the millions here. Yeah, and this is when they were
Speaker 1: still in the thousands, which is pretty incredible. It really
Speaker 1: 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: work 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 threads 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 Timonier.
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 a
Speaker 1: call that's a hard tea, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 1: It 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 it'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 tugger.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm a yanker, okay, but I know I
Speaker 1: can fix it if it all goes right. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: it's it's fixing means going out and buying a new one.
Speaker 1: So well. I love about the story is it's interesting
Speaker 1: because it's a real life story that mirrors something that
Speaker 1: is um a popular misconception. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is in the story you have Toumonnier who had
Speaker 1: a shop in Paris. Uh. He had lots of these
Speaker 1: different machines, eighty of them working at a time, and
Speaker 1: Taylor's people, who sewed by hand, stormed his store and
Speaker 1: destroyed some of the machinery because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: be put out of a job. And the reason why
Speaker 1: I say this is interesting is that there's a story
Speaker 1: that we have told on tech stuff before that is
Speaker 1: erroneous and uh. And in fact I have been guilty
Speaker 1: of of pushing this forward. The idea of sabotage being
Speaker 1: named after sabo, as in the French word for shoe,
Speaker 1: The story is that you had uh. Often it was
Speaker 1: told about weavers who came in and threw their shoes
Speaker 1: into large mechanized loom in order to foul the workings
Speaker 1: and destroy them. As it turns out, that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 1: The first the first appearance of the word sabotage doesn't
Speaker 1: come until in the written word, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, until which tells me that this incident, which
Speaker 1: happened in around the mid eighteen hundreds, could have given
Speaker 1: birth to a word involving tailors that would have replaced sabotage,
Speaker 1: and they just didn't capitalize on it. I wanted to
Speaker 1: include Timonier somehow I got totally Timoniate today at work,
Speaker 1: locked in and they just ambushed me. Yeah. So they
Speaker 1: came and destroyed his shop and he had to flee.
Speaker 1: And he did get financial backing, uh so that he
Speaker 1: could continue his work and develop new machines. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: uh and he got some additional patents as well, both
Speaker 1: in France and in Britain. But the revolution kind of
Speaker 1: caused his legacy to get put on the back burner.
Speaker 1: It turns out some important things that people were attending
Speaker 1: to at the time. Yeah, not so much with the
Speaker 1: let's make machines. Now we've got an American inventor coming
Speaker 1: up next, 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 on modern machines. UM
Speaker 1: and this, you know, of course, was different than the
Speaker 1: single thread chain stitch of Timoni 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 sold I go that's right, he didn't even
Speaker 1: patent this invention. Yeah, I could use the money. He
Speaker 1: sold it to a man named George A Arrowsmith and
Speaker 1: was basically like, yeah, well, you know, all fund some
Speaker 1: other projects with whatever I make off of this. It's
Speaker 1: not that important. Um. As we said, he comes up
Speaker 1: later and becomes very important to remember him. And we'll
Speaker 1: also point out his machine was one that Jonathan referenced
Speaker 1: earlier that would only go in straight lines. You couldn't
Speaker 1: really work curves with it, right, so that that certainly
Speaker 1: limits its usefulness. Uh. Now, we also have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: the fact that there's a challenge in really talking about
Speaker 1: the history of the sewing machine because of the event
Speaker 1: that happened in that the mid eighteen hundreds, early to
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah, we had a little bit of
Speaker 1: a fire in the patent office. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: patents are flammable. Yes, no one had patented the the
Speaker 1: the not the inflammable that would also be flammable, but
Speaker 1: the impossible to burn patent. Yeah, And it wasn't a
Speaker 1: time where they were making tons of backups. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like, you file it and you go on
Speaker 1: your way. Because we're still in the thousands, they haven't
Speaker 1: really gotten their game figured out yet, right, not to
Speaker 1: mention the fact that they're making making duplicates is 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 to 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, orf he just abandoned
Speaker 1: the idea and moved on to something else. But it
Speaker 1: 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 look like little feet that
Speaker 1: come up and kind of kick at your fabric as
Speaker 1: you're sewing, and they have rigid edges and that's kind
Speaker 1: to 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 and 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 here's an interesting
Speaker 1: 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: This peace It is exciting. It's actually not cool, it's
Speaker 1: actually quite hot. But but ump ump so Corless had
Speaker 1: what's considered the third u S sewing machine patents. His
Speaker 1: performed what is called a saddle stitch, which is a
Speaker 1: specialized stitch that's used to this day to join leather together. Uh.
Speaker 1: It kind of keeps it all stable. If anybody has
Speaker 1: ever tried to sew with leather, if you've had like
Speaker 1: a leather pouch or anything, Uh, it can present some
Speaker 1: challenges in terms of how it because it's so rugged
Speaker 1: usually and tough, it will chew on threads and or
Speaker 1: even if you have a lacing, the lacing even though
Speaker 1: it's leather, also we'll kind of get chewed up over time.
Speaker 1: So a saddle stitch kind of gives you a tighter
Speaker 1: stitch and it prevents some of that friction. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: And then also just a year later, in eighteen forty four,
Speaker 1: we've got James Rogers getting the fourth US sewing machine pen.
Speaker 1: And you may all wonder why we're covering every single patent.
Speaker 1: The paton wars will make all clear. Everybody's gonna be
Speaker 1: really apparent in an it's it's it's important because again
Speaker 1: we're trying to illustrate the fact that a lot of
Speaker 1: these 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 the Mother
Speaker 1: Necessity episode, I'll have to go watch my DVDs. Alias
Speaker 1: can you help me with my selling? So it's an
Speaker 1: alias here we're talking about Elias how 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 selling nerds, right,
Speaker 1: all three of you, three of us. So Elias Howe
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 Now he was
Speaker 1: a very smart man. Yeah, so he's going to he
Speaker 1: ends up as a machinist. Overhearing some talk about the
Speaker 1: idea of of a sewing machine and starts to kind
Speaker 1: of apply his own ingenuity, how would I achieve this
Speaker 1: sort of thing? So he's important to remember, yeah and
Speaker 1: he um So he was granted the fifth U S
Speaker 1: patent in September of eighteen forty six. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that I have to laugh because every
Speaker 1: year when September comes around, you see the today on
Speaker 1: this day, Alias how invented the sewing machine, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: back up the truck. Not entirely accurate, right, It's like
Speaker 1: like you know, as An invented the light bulb, all right, No,
Speaker 1: as an improved and it's not a Eureka moment where
Speaker 1: it comes from nowhere, although he did sometimes say that
Speaker 1: like he had it kind of fully universally on his own.
Speaker 1: That's very tesla like to ya. Um. So, this was
Speaker 1: patent number of 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 in both cases you see
Speaker 1: that these are very very early on during the patent
Speaker 1: offices existence. Yeah, they're numbering schemes were kind of neck
Speaker 1: and neck in terms of where they were at in
Speaker 1: terms of um uh accession order. UM. So this patent
Speaker 1: was actually his second version of the machine that he patented.
Speaker 1: He had another prototype a year before that was capable
Speaker 1: of sewing, but he UM he fine tuned it a
Speaker 1: little bit more. And house patent is very important because
Speaker 1: it makes five very specific claims about how the machine
Speaker 1: is going to work, and they come up a lot
Speaker 1: in court battles like yeah, so this is where I
Speaker 1: was talking about how you can make claims within a
Speaker 1: patent and those claims will protect elements of your invention.
Speaker 1: And claims can be everything from specific physical uh mechanical
Speaker 1: ways that the machine works to UH specific method like
Speaker 1: an implementation. We see that today in ways that are
Speaker 1: are less um. They're they're more difficult to understand because
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a physical machine, you can say
Speaker 1: the physical machine does it in this way, and you
Speaker 1: can see whether or not the machine is actually doing
Speaker 1: it in that way. When we talk about today, we're
Speaker 1: talking about stuff like you know, resizing images by pinching
Speaker 1: 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 fail the money, right, Yeah, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: just sometimes everyone just ends up like, well, let's just
Speaker 1: all say we gave each other the money when we
Speaker 1: were supposed to and call today. But anyway, there were
Speaker 1: these five elements. Did you 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 pass 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 shuttles,
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 right, very important as
Speaker 1: I understand it, in the sewing process. Yes, most machines
Speaker 1: made today won't won't stitch at all if you don't
Speaker 1: have to press your foot down because they know they'll
Speaker 1: just be wasting everyone's time. So how didn't meet with
Speaker 1: immediate success with this design? Actually, he tried for a
Speaker 1: while to get people here in the United States excited
Speaker 1: about it, and no one seemed to really give him
Speaker 1: much attention. So he ended up selling the patent rights
Speaker 1: to a or at least the British patent rights, I
Speaker 1: should say, to William Thomas, for the princely sum of
Speaker 1: two fifty British pounds sterling. Uh and uh, I like
Speaker 1: I like the other. Note here he also adapted his
Speaker 1: machine to make umbrellas and corsets. That's fabulous, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm in the market for both right now. So well,
Speaker 1: when we talked about this on History, Tracy was saying,
Speaker 1: I never thought about it before, but umbrella's, of course,
Speaker 1: it's 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 pass 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 were 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 I'm either
Speaker 1: got to support from below or from above. Its fabulous. Well,
Speaker 1: moving on in the the evolution of the sewing machine,
Speaker 1: we move up to eighteen forty eight and the sixth
Speaker 1: US sewing machine patent from John A. Bradshaw, which was
Speaker 1: a little bit snarky. Yeah, he talks about How's patent
Speaker 1: design in his patent and kind of says that it's
Speaker 1: bungling and it's an incumbrance to the action of the
Speaker 1: machine when he talks about the needle. So not only
Speaker 1: can How not get manufacturers interested in his device, he
Speaker 1: has the next uh, patent uh petitioner completely dis him,
Speaker 1: totally trash in his work. Even while he's building on it,
Speaker 1: he's still kind of like he was onto something, but
Speaker 1: I really have this thing figured out, Like okay, well
Speaker 1: I can tell you why it didn't do great when
Speaker 1: the manufacturers wonderful. So eighteen nine we get how coming
Speaker 1: back to the United States, he had gone to England,
Speaker 1: like we said to say, to sell the British patent off.
Speaker 1: And when he comes back he sees that that that
Speaker 1: what had been kind of a quiet, little tiny niche
Speaker 1: industry was starting to take off. Yeah, the seventh patent
Speaker 1: for the sowing machine have been issued to Charles Morey
Speaker 1: and Joseph B. Johnson in eighteen forty nine, and they
Speaker 1: were really some of the first two that were like,
Speaker 1: we need to start selling this and making a bunch
Speaker 1: of them. And even before they received their patent, they
Speaker 1: were selling machines, which is perfectly fine. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like you don't have to have a In fact,
Speaker 1: you often we'll see today things like patent pending where
Speaker 1: people are trying to capitalize on an idea because patent
Speaker 1: applications and patent grants can take a long time, especially
Speaker 1: today now that you have uh, you know, an exponentially
Speaker 1: larger number of applications coming into the patent office than
Speaker 1: you did way back in the mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some other people that were trying to improve
Speaker 1: on more and Johnson's machine in the middle of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. So that same year they got their patent,
Speaker 1: there was a man named Jotham s Conan, and he
Speaker 1: was issued a patent based on a modification he made
Speaker 1: to their machine, which just kind of altered the way
Speaker 1: that the cloth was held during the stitching. But his
Speaker 1: never really went anywhere. He didn't manufacture, he didn't sell.
Speaker 1: But that same day that he got his patent, another
Speaker 1: important person was getting a patent, John Batch Elder. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this was the continuous sewing mechanism and at an endless
Speaker 1: belt to feed the cloth into the machine. Yeah, thank you, John,
Speaker 1: to make sure that you don't have to put in
Speaker 1: all that work yourself. Yeah, But the really important thing
Speaker 1: is who Batch Older sold his patent too. And here
Speaker 1: we come up to the first name in this podcast
Speaker 1: that I recognize. I am Singer the Singer sewing machine.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows that one. Well, I mean you know, my
Speaker 1: my my grandmother and my my mom both had singer
Speaker 1: sewing machines. In fact that there's the both of them
Speaker 1: still exist. And my parents it's us it's like a
Speaker 1: little uh table that's next to the front door of
Speaker 1: their house. But it's an old singer sewing machine that
Speaker 1: that's operated by by pedal. Uh So, yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: the one of those names that I think most people
Speaker 1: associate it with sewing pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: mean it's still a name. So yep, they're still making.
Speaker 1: You don't hear about a lot of how machines these days,
Speaker 1: but the singers still going. So now we're to the
Speaker 1: argument phase. We finally reached the point now where things
Speaker 1: have come to ahead. We've got the the snippy little
Speaker 1: patent applications out of the way. Now it's time to
Speaker 1: really get down to fisticuffs legally speaking. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties where we get that first enormous patent war.
Speaker 1: And it all has to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: these different little elements that have been improved upon over time,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of arguments about who actually had
Speaker 1: ownership of those ideas and in what implementations and who
Speaker 1: was owed money by whom? And it got ugly, really
Speaker 1: really ugly. So there was a a man by the
Speaker 1: name of Allan B. Wilson, and he in eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: was working on this lockstitch machine very similar to the
Speaker 1: modern machine, and his mechanism could also go forward and backwards,
Speaker 1: which we had not encountered before. Uh. And he applied
Speaker 1: for his patent. He had made a second prototype model,
Speaker 1: and the people that owned the brand shop patent from
Speaker 1: eight got wind of this and we're like, hold on
Speaker 1: a minute, Portovore. Uh, we owned some of the concepts
Speaker 1: you're using. The double pointed shuttle that made up a
Speaker 1: part of his machine was something that was part of
Speaker 1: their patent, uh, they claimed, And that claim was not accurate.
Speaker 1: It was complete bunk. So however, they think, well, let's
Speaker 1: throw a wrench into this one. However, they had dollars
Speaker 1: and Wilson didn't, so he could not fight them. So
Speaker 1: we get down to using the old idea of well,
Speaker 1: if if we can't, if we can't suppress this idea,
Speaker 1: one way, we can just kind of run them out
Speaker 1: because we've got we've got a larger reserve of cash. Yes,
Speaker 1: so uh, he had to give up half of his
Speaker 1: claim to A P. Kline and Edward Lee, who at
Speaker 1: that point held the Bradshaw patent, and that was in
Speaker 1: late fifty in November, and then after a little while
Speaker 1: he just sold them the rest of his interest. He
Speaker 1: didn't want to mess with it anymore. He retained very
Speaker 1: limited rights. That's a very sad story there where essentially
Speaker 1: he was beaten down. Yeah, he really had the goods
Speaker 1: in terms of his invention to have been the singer
Speaker 1: of this story in terms of name recognition, but because
Speaker 1: he just didn't have the means to fight anybody that
Speaker 1: made a claim against him and vanished into history and
Speaker 1: to upsalted to the wound, they would use his name
Speaker 1: in official advertisement. Yeah, people recognize that he had invented
Speaker 1: something really pretty exciting because it could do these things
Speaker 1: that previous machines couldn't, And so their advertisements went A B.
Speaker 1: Wilson's sewing Machine, the best and only practical sewing machine,
Speaker 1: not larger than a ladies workbox, for the trifling sum
Speaker 1: of thirty five dollars. So not only does he not
Speaker 1: get the benefit of actually owning this device that he invented,
Speaker 1: he then has the indignity of having his name used
Speaker 1: in the advertising while this other company makes money off
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, he really did get shafted. So meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we've got to lie as How who He's no dummy, No,
Speaker 1: he's witnessing this and realizing some stuff is going down.
Speaker 1: Maybe I need to kind of circle my little my
Speaker 1: proverbial wagons here. So he decides that he's going to
Speaker 1: protect the rights to royalties from his inventions. Uh, and
Speaker 1: anything that could trace elements of the products being sold
Speaker 1: back to one of his patent right, Yeah, and from
Speaker 1: the Branshaw model on. They really were working on How's
Speaker 1: machine and kind of making twee tweaks to that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he really got angry because he saw Isaac
Speaker 1: Singer's 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 so by law, um, I
Speaker 1: should really receive a royalty payment because you're you're using
Speaker 1: it in your device and otherwise not not compensating me
Speaker 1: for it, and so um, I'd really like that two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars you owe me, and Singer, being the very
Speaker 1: level headed professional businessman, uh, decided to um physically threaten How. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He Singer was known for having a really bad temper.
Speaker 1: He did some really seedy things just in business outside
Speaker 1: of this, and when it came to this, there was
Speaker 1: one incident where he allegedly threatened and nearly threw how
Speaker 1: down the steps outside his office. Like there were fisticuffs.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just yelling and through lawyers, they were physically
Speaker 1: I get the feeling that Singer is very much like
Speaker 1: the character from from Parts of the Caribbean who just says,
Speaker 1: you know, they're more like guidelines. It's he's he's not
Speaker 1: not really one to necessarily be too concerned with the
Speaker 1: actual rules of law. You know that actor that plays
Speaker 1: Jackomi Gibb would make a great Isaac Singer. He would.
Speaker 1: But How did a super smart thing. This is where
Speaker 1: we really realized that this man was just really smart
Speaker 1: and very widely so. He like some of these previous
Speaker 1: sad stories, really didn't have a lot of money to
Speaker 1: get into a lot of legal battles, but he figured
Speaker 1: is not a way to finance some litigation. He sells
Speaker 1: half of his interest in his patent to a man
Speaker 1: named George Bliss, and Bliss manufactured machines. He built them
Speaker 1: as being House patent, even though they were pretty different
Speaker 1: from House initial design. But the money that How made
Speaker 1: off of this partnership was basically put into his litigation
Speaker 1: machine and he just started fighting people. Oh got you so,
Speaker 1: So what he was doing was he had made this partnership.
Speaker 1: He was making money off the partnership. Bliss is making
Speaker 1: money because of How's name. How is making money because
Speaker 1: of the partnership with Bliss. He ends up spending that
Speaker 1: money directly on lawyers to attack people who are actually
Speaker 1: infringing upon his patents. Yeah, he went after Singer with
Speaker 1: great vigor, But there were a lot of other people
Speaker 1: that were also in this mix. Uh, two of them
Speaker 1: Laroux and Blodgett. That we're a pair, that we're making
Speaker 1: a firm, that we're making machines that he thought infringed.
Speaker 1: There was actually a judgment in that case in House
Speaker 1: favor that was the first one to be settled and
Speaker 1: once it, it was like the first of the doma knows,
Speaker 1: because then everybody else kind of panicked. It went, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: he really has a case. Right. When you've got a
Speaker 1: precedent set like that, then the it becomes clear that's
Speaker 1: going to get harder and harder to win a case. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know when a defense against such a claim. If
Speaker 1: a claim has already been held up in court in
Speaker 1: one instance, then the fear is that it will be
Speaker 1: the same in future ones. And it's cheaper to settle
Speaker 1: it is to go through the process and then maybe
Speaker 1: have to be forced to hand over a larger reward
Speaker 1: in a court decision. Yeah, and how is basically happy
Speaker 1: to any settlements be like, okay, let's set up a license.
Speaker 1: Like he was willing to deal with them. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like he wanted to prevent other people from making their machine.
Speaker 1: This is very different from today when we were talking
Speaker 1: about similarities. But today we got a lot of what
Speaker 1: we call them patentrols. These are the folks who will
Speaker 1: get a patent and then either they don't make anything
Speaker 1: on their own, or they make something very very tiny,
Speaker 1: and then they just kind of sit around and wait
Speaker 1: for folks to infringe upon them. They threatened litigation in
Speaker 1: hopes of a settlement. Um. But but what a lot
Speaker 1: of people have said about the recent patent wars is
Speaker 1: that the patent system needs to create an incentive for
Speaker 1: patent holders to license their ideas for royalties, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what hal was doing back in this day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he really saw the benefit of like, hey,
Speaker 1: it would be a pain in the took us for
Speaker 1: me to set up my own manufacturing plant and be
Speaker 1: churning these out. But all these people are already set up.
Speaker 1: I can just cut deals with them. Everybody wins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: except not so much. No, No, I got it got
Speaker 1: ugly again. Apparently Singer was not done. Yeah, he didn't settle,
Speaker 1: and so that case dragged on. Yeah, and it got
Speaker 1: ugly in public. To write you got this great little
Speaker 1: story about to to advertisements that ran on the same
Speaker 1: page of the New York Daily Tribune, but tell very
Speaker 1: different stories. Yeah, the first one reads the sewing machine.
Speaker 1: It has been recently decided by the United States Court
Speaker 1: that Elias how Junior of number three zero five Broadway
Speaker 1: was the originator of the sewing machine now extensively used
Speaker 1: call at his office and see forty of them in
Speaker 1: constant use upon cloth, whether, etcetera, and judge for yourselves
Speaker 1: as to their practicality. Also see a certified copy from
Speaker 1: the records of the United States Court of the injunction
Speaker 1: against Singers machine so called, which is conclusive. You that
Speaker 1: want sewing machines be cautious how you purchase them of
Speaker 1: others than him or those licensed under him, else the
Speaker 1: law will compel you to pay twice over. Meanwhile, we
Speaker 1: have the other advertisement sewing machines. For the last two years,
Speaker 1: Elias how Junior of Massachusetts, has been threatening suits and
Speaker 1: injunctions against all the world who make, use or sells
Speaker 1: sewing machines. We have sold many machines, are selling them rapidly,
Speaker 1: and have good right to sell them. The public do
Speaker 1: not acknowledge Mr Howe's pretensions, and for the best reasons.
Speaker 1: One machines made according to House patent are of no
Speaker 1: practical use. He tried several years without being able to
Speaker 1: introduce one. Too. It is notorious, especially in New York,
Speaker 1: that how was not the original inventor of the machine
Speaker 1: combining the needle and shuttle, and that his claim to
Speaker 1: that is not valid. Finally, we make and sell the
Speaker 1: best sewing machines. So yeah, there's um, there's some vitriolic
Speaker 1: I love how It's it's like a sewing machine telenovela.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of soap opera going on here. And
Speaker 1: to make it even more soap opera ish, How went
Speaker 1: after Singer for libel. But he also went after the
Speaker 1: New York Daily Tribune for printing his advertisement in the
Speaker 1: first place. So we now have How going after Singer
Speaker 1: both for patent infringement and for libel. Yeah, fantastic, just
Speaker 1: to make their relationship that much more delightful and huggy.
Speaker 1: So at this point Singer, Singer wakes up and just
Speaker 1: as 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. Besides, he's going to destroy How totally. He
Speaker 1: decides he is going to seek out every scrap of
Speaker 1: evidence on earth. He even sought out sources in Europe
Speaker 1: and China to prove that house design was not original. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the key here is that the wording in House
Speaker 1: patent was really his protection because he had patented the
Speaker 1: combination of the shuttle and the one I and the
Speaker 1: I pointed needle and how they would work together. But
Speaker 1: he never claimed to have invented either of those elements,
Speaker 1: and so his patent remained accurate and correct and not
Speaker 1: infringing on anyone else because he didn't say I invented
Speaker 1: the needle sho. He said I invented this combination of
Speaker 1: these two elements that work in this particular way, and
Speaker 1: that is completely valid patent law. So again, if you
Speaker 1: come up with a new way to use existing technology
Speaker 1: that you can claim as an improvement over others, there's
Speaker 1: 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. However, if you remember back
Speaker 1: when we talked about Walter Hunt, who was the guy
Speaker 1: who invented a pretty workable sewing machine but then kind
Speaker 1: of sold it off and abandoned it, Yeah, 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 sewing 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, they're
Speaker 1: they're in tire 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 remembered, 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 great,
Speaker 1: and how you got nothing? Uh? And uh. The Scientific
Speaker 1: American at the time, as this was all bubbling up,
Speaker 1: actually published a pretty uh scathing article about Hunt, asserting
Speaker 1: because he was like, oh yeah, I did invent the
Speaker 1: sewing machine. Now that he sees that there's money in
Speaker 1: it and this is a litigious thing, they basically said
Speaker 1: that his claims were rusty, He didn't he had no
Speaker 1: hat in this game, Like what was he trying to do? Basis? Really?
Speaker 1: But there was a trial at the patent office. There
Speaker 1: were hundreds of pages of testing mony I mean it
Speaker 1: went on forever. Singer dragged everybody in that he could
Speaker 1: think of that had ever touched anything that vaguely resembled
Speaker 1: the sewing machine. UM Patent Commissioner Charles Mason, though, ruled
Speaker 1: in favor of Elias Howe on eighteen fifty four, and
Speaker 1: the big part of Hunt's loss, even though he really
Speaker 1: did have a pretty good working machine, was that he
Speaker 1: didn't do anything to patent or protected eighteen years prior. So, uh,
Speaker 1: the patent office can't can't rule in favor of someone
Speaker 1: who hasn't actually gone through the process. Yeah, yeah, the commissioners,
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: the poor singer at this point, not not really poor
Speaker 1: singer because he's kind of a jerk, but but you've
Speaker 1: got you've got how going after the people who are
Speaker 1: selling singer sewing machines, are incorporating them. Then what they're
Speaker 1: doing instead, you know, they get attacked by how they
Speaker 1: turned around. They attack singers saying, you got us into this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had no right to sell us the licenses that
Speaker 1: you sold us because you didn't have a right to it.
Speaker 1: You didn't own the technology that you were licensing to us,
Speaker 1: and and that's why we're in trouble. So sous by
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four. Keep in mind this started in the
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifty By eighteen fifty four, Singer and
Speaker 1: how set all their lawsuit and it's announced in Scientific American.
Speaker 1: This is a big deal. Yeah, this is not tiny news.
Speaker 1: This is like, this is just like when you go
Speaker 1: on to Google News and you see like Samsung and
Speaker 1: Apple settle lawsuits. That's equivalent. Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: it reminds me of when those first like headlines were
Speaker 1: happening about no Steve Jobs and Bill Gates actually like
Speaker 1: each other. It's fine, and it's like that level of wait,
Speaker 1: what we didn't think that's how this worked. Uh, except
Speaker 1: there was very little pushing down of stairs in any
Speaker 1: of them. Right, well, what what's really cool about this? Okay,
Speaker 1: so this didn't end all litigation. There was still some
Speaker 1: continuing on. But by eighteen fifty six we get the
Speaker 1: president of Grover and Baker, which was one of the
Speaker 1: companies involved in the suits, that were, uh, that we're
Speaker 1: involving Elias How, I feel like we should back up
Speaker 1: because we skipped that. People tried to then sue How
Speaker 1: for improving Uh yeah, so How basically at this point
Speaker 1: was the you know, the czar of the sewing machine
Speaker 1: injury in distry. He owned the patent to the biggest
Speaker 1: chunk of it and was licensing those out and he thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I could really tweak that original design as well.
Speaker 1: But every tweak he made other people claim they had
Speaker 1: already made. So then he was getting sued by people
Speaker 1: for patent infringement for improving on his original design. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's the litigation festival. Basically, now you've got people saying,
Speaker 1: all right, well, these improvements you're making, we've already made
Speaker 1: and we've already patented. So it's become a huge mess.
Speaker 1: By eighteen fifty six, you get the president of Grover
Speaker 1: and Baker, which was one of the companies that was
Speaker 1: involved in these cases against Howe, about these improvements to
Speaker 1: the original designs and comes up with a concept called
Speaker 1: the combination, which, by the way, these days we would
Speaker 1: call this a patent pool. Yeah, And a patent pool
Speaker 1: is essentially when you get a whole bunch of different
Speaker 1: stakeholders who all own different patents that are involved in
Speaker 1: the same general technology to essentially come to an agreement saying,
Speaker 1: all right, gonna pull all these patents together, and as
Speaker 1: long as we are all officially part of this group,
Speaker 1: and we all agree to operate by these rules, we're
Speaker 1: not going to sue the pants off each other whenever
Speaker 1: we make an improvement to that technology or incorporate that
Speaker 1: technology into our products. Make suring that everyone's getting the
Speaker 1: royalties that they deserve exactly. So, the president of Grover
Speaker 1: and Baker was Orlando B. Potter, and he, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like he's a person that's not very well
Speaker 1: known historically, but he really deserves a lot of kudos
Speaker 1: because he was really the first person to go, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys, we're only hurting ourselves. We're kind of being idiots.
Speaker 1: And he really established this concept of what is now
Speaker 1: a patent pool. Uh. So he was like, let's stop,
Speaker 1: you know, holding up everybody's production. Let's stop throwing our
Speaker 1: money at lawyers. We don't need that. We can work
Speaker 1: this out. Uh. And so he got them all to
Speaker 1: join their forces. They pulled their patents, they made one
Speaker 1: unified combination patent for sewing machines. How initially was not
Speaker 1: on word with this. Well, now, when you own a
Speaker 1: huge chunk of the landscape, then you feel like you
Speaker 1: have the most to lose and that kind of agreement.
Speaker 1: He definitely felt that way, but eventually he did agree
Speaker 1: to it. He had made some pretty heavy stipulations and
Speaker 1: the other parties agreed. Basically, he was going to get
Speaker 1: a five dollar royalty on every sewing machine that was
Speaker 1: sold in the US, and for every sewing machine that
Speaker 1: was exported he would get a dollar. Now, I remember
Speaker 1: this is in eighteen fifty six, so these are not
Speaker 1: paltry sums. No, this is this is significant money. So
Speaker 1: in the next eleven years between eighteen fifty six in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven, when How's patent expired, he made more
Speaker 1: than two million dollars And that's two million dollars in
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds money. Yeah, that's way more, but he would
Speaker 1: be a kazillionaire. Crazy. That's my main was estimation there, um,
Speaker 1: And he requested a an extension to that patent but
Speaker 1: was denied. Patents do like I said earlier, spire, and
Speaker 1: when they expire, you lose that exclusivity. You cannot demand
Speaker 1: licenses for it. That technology, that implementation of that technology
Speaker 1: then belongs to the public, so anyone can create any
Speaker 1: kind of device using that sort of approach um that
Speaker 1: was originally covered by that patent that's now expired. So
Speaker 1: he doesn't get the extension he wanted, and he dies
Speaker 1: of a broken heart. He doesn't really die of a
Speaker 1: broken heart. His heart was broken earlier in his life
Speaker 1: when his wife died, but it did not kill him
Speaker 1: to the best of our knowledge. However, some say that
Speaker 1: it did kind of spur hist because he just needed
Speaker 1: to focus on something else um. But Singer, of course
Speaker 1: continued to work his magic in the sewing machine industry,
Speaker 1: and now as a consequence, you know, he's really the
Speaker 1: name we remember more than all as 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 patent that's sitting on patent's
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. Holly, I have to thank you again for
Speaker 1: joining me on this podcast and to bring this topic.
Speaker 1: It was awesome to have some something that normally would
Speaker 1: fall outside the scope of what I usually talk about,
Speaker 1: but it fits in so well. Yeay, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. I'm always happy to talk a little sewing talk. Well,
Speaker 1: you know who knows. Maybe I'll get you on here
Speaker 1: again and we'll talk about you know, the sewing techniques
Speaker 1: used to make crazy science faction costumes delight me in
Speaker 1: every way. Yeah, I'm sure our listeners would love it
Speaker 1: as well. So listeners, if you have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, or maybe you've got a question
Speaker 1: that came up during the this one, or there's maybe
Speaker 1: you just want to give me kudos or shout out
Speaker 1: to Holly, you can let me know. I have an
Speaker 1: email address that you can send mail to that is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. The handle
Speaker 1: at all three is tech Stuff h s W. And
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon for more on
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