Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and today is another Saturday
Speaker 1: morning rerun episode where we take a classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff and we play it for you in case
Speaker 1: you didn't have a chance to listen to it when
Speaker 1: it originally aired. I mean, this show has been going
Speaker 1: on for ten years, so I know not everybody can
Speaker 1: do a deep dive into the archives, and this one
Speaker 1: I think is really really exciting. Now. Throughout the history
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, I've had the opportunity to have lots
Speaker 1: of different interesting guests on the show, including other hosts
Speaker 1: of How Stuff Work shows, And in this episode, Holly Fry,
Speaker 1: one of the co hosts of Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, joined the show to talk about an enormous
Speaker 1: patent war and and not talking about Samsung and Apple,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about sewing machines. Yep, the Humble sewing machine
Speaker 1: was the centerpiece of a patent war that got pretty ugly,
Speaker 1: and Holly and I talked not just about that, but
Speaker 1: about the technology and its cultural impact. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published on October thirteenth, two thousand and fourteen. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy this classic episode of tech Stuff. 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 government some form of agency that
Speaker 1: has authority to an inventor or an assignee for the
Speaker 1: use of an invention. Now, an invention does not have
Speaker 1: to be a complete thing all by itself. It could
Speaker 1: be a component of a thing, like if you were
Speaker 1: to 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 actus 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 that they could keep their
Speaker 1: proprietary information to themselves, so when people tried to replicate them,
Speaker 1: they did not always work. Right. See, you could if
Speaker 1: you wanted to, if you invented something, there's nothing nothing
Speaker 1: that requires you to get a patent, you could keep
Speaker 1: it secret and say this magical technology is mine and
Speaker 1: mine alone. But the danger of that, of course, is
Speaker 1: if someone gets hold of it and figures out how
Speaker 1: it works, they could then make the same thing with
Speaker 1: and you would have no protection. Only could they make
Speaker 1: the same thing, they could file a patent for it,
Speaker 1: and then you would no longer be able to use
Speaker 1: the thing you invented. Yeah, it's all about first rights
Speaker 1: so as it turns out, And we haven't even gotten
Speaker 1: into the complication of filing for a patent in one
Speaker 1: country versus filing for a paton and another. But we
Speaker 1: we've hemmed in hod long enough about patents. Let's start off.
Speaker 1: Tell me what what was sewing before the sewing machine. Well,
Speaker 1: most people would probably recognize it if they thought about
Speaker 1: pre sewing machines sewing, they would think of an needle
Speaker 1: and thread. But even way before that, there were people
Speaker 1: using bones and sticks to kind of poke holes into fabrics,
Speaker 1: usually leathers, and then they would pass a lace through.
Speaker 1: It was not all one continuous thing where the lace
Speaker 1: was attached to the the boner stick, and then they
Speaker 1: added the eye that circle that the whatever you're lacing
Speaker 1: material passes through. The thing that confounds me whenever I
Speaker 1: have to threaten. Many people say that I think you
Speaker 1: either 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 they're 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 am, 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: worked out and eventually the rest would follow. You've got
Speaker 1: to really nail the needle, is his approach, which is
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: um had was pointed on both ends, and it had
Speaker 1: an eye, but the eye was in the middle, which
Speaker 1: is not If anybody knows a modern sewing machine or
Speaker 1: hand sewing needle, the eye is usually not in the middle. Right,
Speaker 1: So then we moved forward his s We have Thomas
Speaker 1: sat who I love the title of his patent. We
Speaker 1: talked about this in the History podcast. It's a succinct.
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 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 favorite.
Speaker 1: That's fair. You went more Welsh. That's all right, something's
Speaker 1: fine with that. So he's actually describing three different machines
Speaker 1: in this pattern. 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: it 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, it's probably one of those
Speaker 1: things where we thought, goodness, gracious, this is a lot
Speaker 1: of work. Let's let's just lump it all together. One
Speaker 1: very wordy document will cover me. So the second part
Speaker 1: of his patent was actually the one for stitching, and
Speaker 1: it really wasn't terribly practical. It had a lot of
Speaker 1: components that we actually associate with modern showing machines. So
Speaker 1: it had the arm with the needle, it had continuous
Speaker 1: thread from a spool, uh, and it had a table
Speaker 1: set up that the cloth would sit on. And those
Speaker 1: all still persist in some form or another. But his
Speaker 1: is a case where there's no actual example of his
Speaker 1: machine having been built, although in eighteen seventy three Newton Wilson,
Speaker 1: who was from Great Britain, found the plans and he
Speaker 1: did build this machine, but it did not work. And
Speaker 1: this is one of those ones that we talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit ago, where the suspicion is that he
Speaker 1: didn't entirely disclose what he was getting. 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, and it has to
Speaker 1: it has to be reasonably you know, the people at
Speaker 1: the patent offices have to reasonably believe that you you
Speaker 1: believe it will work the way you've designed it. But
Speaker 1: you don't have to prove. Yeah, there's not a proofing
Speaker 1: stage design. Yeah, you don't have to bring one in
Speaker 1: and say, well, here, let me put it in motion
Speaker 1: and show you that all the parts move the way
Speaker 1: I've described it in the patent. It really is just
Speaker 1: meant to prevent other people from making that same design
Speaker 1: without your permission. All right. Well, then in eight four
Speaker 1: we've got this story about Thomas Stone and James Henderson
Speaker 1: who were issued a patent in France for their own
Speaker 1: kind of sewing machine. Right. Yeah. It kind of created
Speaker 1: an overcast stich. So if you don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: I do not. If you see like a situation where
Speaker 1: two pieces of cloth are bound together and there's a
Speaker 1: stitch that passes through each one and kind of spirals
Speaker 1: around the edges and then back through, that's an overcast
Speaker 1: all right, Um, so this was similar. It's also called
Speaker 1: a whip stitch when you do it by hand, so
Speaker 1: it was very simple. But it could work on all
Speaker 1: different kinds of fabrics, and it was able to stitch curves. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not just a straight line like some of
Speaker 1: the other devices will be talking about. Correct, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of them will only go in a straight line,
Speaker 1: but this one could handle curves. The one big drawback
Speaker 1: of it, though, was that it did not have a
Speaker 1: continuous thread feed, so there was a lot of stopping
Speaker 1: and going and re threading of needles and fitting. So
Speaker 1: it saved time. We think theoretically, I say that with
Speaker 1: a question mark on purpose, right, then may maybe it
Speaker 1: saves time for someone who just really hates the motion
Speaker 1: of actually making a stitch well, or if you're doing
Speaker 1: like large scale things like leathers and probably help. So
Speaker 1: that's same year you have John Duncan of Glasgow here
Speaker 1: patenting an embroidery machine, which is not quite the same
Speaker 1: thing as a stitching machine. Correct. I mean it does
Speaker 1: do stitches, but it's not the same sort of utilitarian
Speaker 1: things that would hold together pants, right. Uh, they will
Speaker 1: just make the pants beautiful. I've learned that through a
Speaker 1: better experience. Uh. 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, and
Speaker 1: 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 I aloud a
Speaker 1: machine that had a needle that would not have to
Speaker 1: pass all the way through the fabric. It could just
Speaker 1: puncture it, uh slightly and then pull back out and
Speaker 1: make the stitch that way, right, which is how modern
Speaker 1: machines still were for the most part. I think there's
Speaker 1: a couple of special tea machines that do different things.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so it had two needles. One, as you said,
Speaker 1: punched in and passed the thread down, another kind of
Speaker 1: shuttled through it, and then it got pulled back up.
Speaker 1: So um, continuous stitching via these two different thread feeds. Cool.
Speaker 1: And then we have what my favorite name on our lists,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites eight thirty So it's Bartelomy Timonier.
Speaker 1: I love a good French name. Yeah, it's a great one.
Speaker 1: Is 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 thing 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. So that's
Speaker 1: what I always get nervous now whenever I see a
Speaker 1: loose thread. And I'm more of a snipper than a
Speaker 1: than a tugger at this. I'm a yanker, but I
Speaker 1: know I can fix it if it all goes right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for me, it's it's fixing means going out and buying
Speaker 1: a new one. We'll come right back to our discussion
Speaker 1: about the Great Patent Wars and the sewing machine in
Speaker 1: just a second, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Well. I love about this story
Speaker 1: is it's interesting because it's a real life story that
Speaker 1: mirrors something that is um a popular misconception. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is in the story you have
Speaker 1: Toumonier who had a shop in Paris, Uh. He had
Speaker 1: lots of these different machines, eighty of them working at
Speaker 1: a time, and Taylor's people who sewed by hand, stormed
Speaker 1: his store and destroyed some of the machinery because they
Speaker 1: didn't want to be put out of a job. And
Speaker 1: the reason why I say this is interesting is that
Speaker 1: there's a story that we have told on tech stuff
Speaker 1: before that is erroneous and uh. And in fact I
Speaker 1: have been guilty of of pushing this forward. The idea
Speaker 1: of sabotage being named after sabo, as in the French
Speaker 1: word for shoe. The story is that you had uh.
Speaker 1: Often it was told about weavers who came in and
Speaker 1: threw their shoes into large mechanized looms in order to
Speaker 1: foul the workings and destroy them. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily true. The first the first appearance of
Speaker 1: the word sabotage doesn't come until in the written word,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, until which tells me
Speaker 1: that this incident, which happened in around the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: could have given birth to a word involving tailors that
Speaker 1: would have replaced sabotage, and they just didn't capitalize on it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to include Timonier somehow Timony as I got
Speaker 1: totally Timoniate today at work in and they just ambushed me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they came and destroyed his shop and he had
Speaker 1: to flee. And he did get financial backing, uh so
Speaker 1: that he could continue his work and develop new machines.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, uh, and he got some additional patents as well,
Speaker 1: both in France and in Britain. But the revolution kind
Speaker 1: of caused his legacy to get put on the back burner.
Speaker 1: He turns out there were some important things that people
Speaker 1: were attending to at the time. Yeah, not so much
Speaker 1: with the let's make machines. Now we've got an American
Speaker 1: inventor coming up next, so let's just take a moment
Speaker 1: to go America. Well, and he becomes very important in
Speaker 1: the patent battles, so as is Walter Hunt you're talking
Speaker 1: about here. Yeah. So he made a machine that it
Speaker 1: created a lock stitch used to thread sources, very similar
Speaker 1: to the bobbing and school method you would see on
Speaker 1: modern machines. Um and this you know, of course, was
Speaker 1: different than the single thread chain stitch of Timoni. A
Speaker 1: successful machines and he kind of was a busy bee
Speaker 1: he had a lot of inventions going at the same time,
Speaker 1: and so it wasn't like this sewing machine was his
Speaker 1: baby and he had really put his heart and soul
Speaker 1: into it. He was kind of like, no, nobody's ever
Speaker 1: gonna be interested in this, and he sold it. So
Speaker 1: he sold the patent off to He didn't even have
Speaker 1: the patent. He just sold I go. That's why he
Speaker 1: didn't even patent his invention. 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 going 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 an 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. Yeah, as it turns
Speaker 1: out patents are flammable. Yes, no one had pended the
Speaker 1: 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 file it 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 copy. 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 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 US patent
Speaker 1: for a sewing machine came about, and that was issued
Speaker 1: to Benjamin W. Bean which is a great name, I know. Um,
Speaker 1: and he created a unique development and that his machine
Speaker 1: was the first that actually fed the fabrics through gears.
Speaker 1: So for the stitchers in the house, all three of us. Um,
Speaker 1: that's similar to feed dogs. And if you don't stitch
Speaker 1: what a feed dog is. If you've ever looked at
Speaker 1: the sewing machine, you may see these two. They almost
Speaker 1: look like little feet that come up and kind of
Speaker 1: kick at your fabric as you're sewing, and they have
Speaker 1: rigid edges and that's kind of pulling your fabric through
Speaker 1: as you go right, so you don't have to put
Speaker 1: through as much effort, you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: misguiding the fabric. So it helps feed the fabric through
Speaker 1: as you're stitching. Yes, sometimes it creates great drama and
Speaker 1: it eats fabric, but not very often. Um and his
Speaker 1: also had a clamp mechanism to attach it to a table,
Speaker 1: so that was also a new development. Uh, and there's
Speaker 1: still machines made that do that. Also that year, in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three, we got George H. Corliss, who uh
Speaker 1: you know, he was also a busy body making making
Speaker 1: a steam engine. That's pretty cool. We did a full
Speaker 1: episode in Tech Stuff on steam engine. So if you
Speaker 1: guys are are big into that and you really want
Speaker 1: to know about the development of the steam engine, here's
Speaker 1: a here's an interesting little effect. The original steam engines
Speaker 1: didn't push with steam. They rather would pull by letting
Speaker 1: steam condense and create a vacuum, thus pulling a piston
Speaker 1: down rather than pushing a piston out. But we go
Speaker 1: into full detail and tech stuff, so I don't need
Speaker 1: to redo the whole thing. This pretty cool stuff. It
Speaker 1: is exciting. It's actually not cool, it's actually quite hot.
Speaker 1: But ump. So Corliss had what's considered the third u
Speaker 1: S sewing machine patents. His performed what is called a
Speaker 1: saddle stitch, which is a specialized stitch that's used to
Speaker 1: this day to join leather together. Uh, it kind of
Speaker 1: keeps it all stable. If anybody has ever tried to
Speaker 1: sew with leather, if you've had like a leather pouch
Speaker 1: or anything, Uh, it can present some challenges in terms
Speaker 1: of how it because it's so rugged usually and tough,
Speaker 1: it will chew on threads and or even if you
Speaker 1: have a lacing lacing even though it's leather, also we'll
Speaker 1: kind of get chewed up over time. So a saddle
Speaker 1: stitch kind of gives you a tighter stitch and it
Speaker 1: prevents some of that friction. Okay. Cool, And then also
Speaker 1: just a year later, in eighteen forty four, we've got
Speaker 1: James Rogers getting the fourth US sewing machine pen And
Speaker 1: you may all wonder why we're covering every single patent.
Speaker 1: The pen wars will make all clear. Everybody's gonna be
Speaker 1: really apparent, and I mean, it's it's it's important because
Speaker 1: again we're trying to illustrate the fact that a lot
Speaker 1: of these patents were not revolutionary devices that completely reinvented
Speaker 1: the machine. They were sometimes incremental improvements that had a
Speaker 1: remarkable difference 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 Bean's 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 setup that built on Bean's design. So I
Speaker 1: really set a precedent here. But now we're going to
Speaker 1: the start of the show. Okay, who's the star of
Speaker 1: the show because not being a big sewing machine guy,
Speaker 1: but you watched 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, theres alias,
Speaker 1: can you help me with my sewing? So it's an
Speaker 1: alias here we're talking and about Elias Howe Jr. Yes,
Speaker 1: all right, And there's even a play on his name
Speaker 1: where he tells her he's gonna fix everything and she
Speaker 1: says Alias how And it's very witty to the sewing
Speaker 1: nerds in right, all three of youth. 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 the back noors. Now, he
Speaker 1: was a very smart man. Yeah, so he's going to
Speaker 1: Uh he ends up as a machinist overhearing some talk
Speaker 1: about the idea of of a sewing machine and starts
Speaker 1: to kind of apply his own ingenuity. How would I
Speaker 1: achieve 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 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 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: It's very tesla like to um So. This was patent
Speaker 1: number four thousand, seven fifty in the United States. You know,
Speaker 1: the previous one we gave. The number two was the
Speaker 1: British patent. So in both cases you see that these
Speaker 1: are very very early on during the patent offices existence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're numbering schemes were kind of neck and neck in
Speaker 1: terms of where they were at in terms of um
Speaker 1: uh accession order. Um So, this patent was actually his
Speaker 1: second version of the machine that he patented he had
Speaker 1: another prototype a year before that was capable of sewing,
Speaker 1: but he um, he fine tuned it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: And house patent is very important because it makes five
Speaker 1: very specific claims about how the machine is going to work,
Speaker 1: and they come up a lot in court battles like yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is where I was talking about how you
Speaker 1: can make claims within a patent and those claims will
Speaker 1: protect elements of your invention. And claims can be everything
Speaker 1: from specific physical uh mechanical ways that the machine works
Speaker 1: to UH specific method like an implementation. We see that
Speaker 1: today in ways that are are less um they're they're
Speaker 1: more difficult to understand because if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: physical machine, you can say the physical machine does it
Speaker 1: in this way, and you can see whether or not
Speaker 1: the machine is actually doing it in that way. When
Speaker 1: we talk about today, we're talking about stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: resizing images by pinching or or moving your fingers further
Speaker 1: apart from each other, and it starts to get a
Speaker 1: little wibbly wobbly time you whiney when you are trying
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well, this is this is a method
Speaker 1: that is unique that I came up with, and no
Speaker 1: one else can use it unless they come through me.
Speaker 1: That's it's one of those evolutions of the patent office
Speaker 1: that we're still trying to kind of reconcile. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not all black and white, which is why you get
Speaker 1: into these huge battles and arguments and things go to court,
Speaker 1: and you hear about Apple having to pay money, but
Speaker 1: then Samsung has to fail the money right, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they just sometimes everyone just ends up like, well, let's
Speaker 1: just all say we gave each other the money we
Speaker 1: were supposed to and call today. But anyway, there were
Speaker 1: these five elements. Did you want to cover any of them?
Speaker 1: You have all of them written out here are and
Speaker 1: they're written out long because I cut and pasted it
Speaker 1: from another document. I'll kind of do the short version. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the first was he describes how he's going to
Speaker 1: form a seam by using a curve needle to go
Speaker 1: through the cloth and a bobbin to kind of connect
Speaker 1: to that and and make the stitch, similar to how
Speaker 1: we've talked about before this to thread version. The second
Speaker 1: is how this thread is going to get lifted and
Speaker 1: pass through the needle eye. There's a lifting rod involved
Speaker 1: that's very important. The third is how the thread is
Speaker 1: going to be passed out by the shuttle, so it
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with the tension and how
Speaker 1: it passes through at a consistent rate. The fourth is
Speaker 1: um how a couple of levers go together and enact
Speaker 1: their sort of mechanisms on the string or the thread
Speaker 1: that's involved. And the fifth is how the cloth is
Speaker 1: held in place by a baster plate, uh, which is
Speaker 1: still a thing that happens like now, if you drop
Speaker 1: your foot down on your machine, it's kind of pressing
Speaker 1: the cloth onto the plate of your machine, and that's
Speaker 1: that keeps it from going just flying away when you're
Speaker 1: trying to stitch on it very important as I understand it,
Speaker 1: in the sewing process. Yes, most machines made today won't
Speaker 1: won't stitch at all if you don't have the press
Speaker 1: your foot down because they know they'll just be wasting
Speaker 1: everyone's time. So how didn't meet with immediate success with
Speaker 1: this design? Actually, he tried for a while to get
Speaker 1: people here in the United States excited about it, and
Speaker 1: no one seemed to really give him much attention. So
Speaker 1: he ended up selling the patent rights to a or
Speaker 1: at least the British patent rights, I should say to
Speaker 1: William Thomas for the princely sum of two fifty British
Speaker 1: pounds sterling. Uh and uh, I like, I like the other.
Speaker 1: Note here He also adapted his machine to make umbrellas
Speaker 1: and corsets. That's fabulous. Yeah, I mean, I'm in the
Speaker 1: market are both right now? So well, when we talked
Speaker 1: about this on History, Tracy was saying, I never thought
Speaker 1: about it before, but umbrellas, of course, it's really are
Speaker 1: quite a lot alike, and that you know, you have
Speaker 1: a casing and should have these rigid elements that passed
Speaker 1: through it and hold it all in shape. And at
Speaker 1: this point it would have been all deal bone, course tree.
Speaker 1: So it was very similar to an umbrella, right, except
Speaker 1: that the main difference, at least in my experience, is
Speaker 1: that it's a relief to have an umbrella and a
Speaker 1: relief to get rid of a courset. Don't get it started.
Speaker 1: Of courses are good for you if they're well fitted.
Speaker 1: They protect your back, they give you a great posture.
Speaker 1: Those tight lasers are a whole different universe. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: worked at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, so I have a
Speaker 1: very specific experience of watching ladies. A good foundation courset
Speaker 1: will keep your clothes in place that holds up all
Speaker 1: those Victorian layers if it's a Victorian courset. So I'm
Speaker 1: kind of going from the time period we're talking about.
Speaker 1: They're they're not mystery torture devices. Well really were not
Speaker 1: intended for that. You will clearly need to have you
Speaker 1: come in and give a talk because because those ladies,
Speaker 1: let me tell there is a lot of technology and
Speaker 1: physics and of course I'm got to support from below
Speaker 1: or from above. It's fabulous. Well, moving on in the
Speaker 1: the evolution of the sewing machine, we move up to
Speaker 1: and the six you wes sewing machine patent from John A. Bradshaw,
Speaker 1: which was a little bit snarky, was it. Yeah? He
Speaker 1: talks about how is patent design his patent and kind
Speaker 1: of says that it's bungling and it's an incumbrance to
Speaker 1: the action of the machine when he talks about the needle.
Speaker 1: So not only can how not get manufacturers interested in
Speaker 1: his device, he has the next uh patent UH petitioner
Speaker 1: completely dis him totally trash in his work. Even while
Speaker 1: he's building on it, he's still kind of like he
Speaker 1: was onto something but I I really have this thing
Speaker 1: figured out, Like, okay, well I can tell you why
Speaker 1: it didn't do great when the manufacturers wonderful. So et
Speaker 1: 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, you know, an exponentially larger number of applications
Speaker 1: coming into the patent office than you did way back
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds. Yeah, there were some other
Speaker 1: people that were trying to improve on Marie and Johnson's
Speaker 1: machine in the middle of eighteen forty nine. So that
Speaker 1: same year they got their patent, there was a man
Speaker 1: named Jotham s Conan, and he was issued a patent
Speaker 1: based on a modification he made to their machine which
Speaker 1: just kind of altered the way that the cloth was
Speaker 1: held during the stitching. But his never really went anywhere.
Speaker 1: He didn't manufacture, he didn't sell. But that same day
Speaker 1: that he got his patent, another important person was getting
Speaker 1: a patent, John Batch Elder. So yeah, this was the
Speaker 1: continuous sewing mechanism and at an endless belt to feed
Speaker 1: the cloth into the machine. Yeah, thank you, John, to
Speaker 1: make sure that you don't have to put in all
Speaker 1: that work yourself. Yeah, But the really important thing is
Speaker 1: who Batch Older sold his patent too. And here we
Speaker 1: come up to the first name in this podcast that
Speaker 1: I recognize. I am Singer the Singer sewing machine. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows that one. Well, I mean, you know, my my
Speaker 1: my grandmother and my my mom both had Singer sewing machines.
Speaker 1: In fact that there's the both of them still exist
Speaker 1: and my parents. It's a it's like a little uh
Speaker 1: table that's next to the front door of their house.
Speaker 1: But it's an old Singer sewing machine that that's operated
Speaker 1: by by pedal. Uh So, yeah, it's it's the one
Speaker 1: of those names that I think most people associate it
Speaker 1: with sewing. Pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, because I mean it's
Speaker 1: still a name. So yep, they're still making you don't
Speaker 1: hear about a lot of how machines these days. The
Speaker 1: singers still going. We have a little bit more to
Speaker 1: say about the Singer sewing machine and patents, but before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's take another quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. We finally reached the point now where
Speaker 1: things have come to ahead. We've got the the snippy
Speaker 1: little patent applications out of the way. Now it's time
Speaker 1: to really get down to fisticuffs legally speaking. And uh
Speaker 1: it's the eighteen fifties where we get that first enormous
Speaker 1: patent war. And it all has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that these different little elements that have been improved
Speaker 1: upon over time, there were a lot of arguments about
Speaker 1: who actually had ownership of those ideas and in what implementations,
Speaker 1: and who was owed money by whom, and it got ugly,
Speaker 1: really really ugly. So there was a a man by
Speaker 1: the name of Allan B. Wilson, and he in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty was working on this lockstitch machine very similar to
Speaker 1: the modern machine, and his mechanism could also go forward
Speaker 1: and backwards, which we had not encountered before. Uh, And
Speaker 1: he applied for his patent. He had made a second
Speaker 1: prototype model and the people that owned the brad Shop
Speaker 1: patent from eight got wind of this, and we're like,
Speaker 1: hold on a minute. For four Uh, we owned some
Speaker 1: of the concepts you're using. The double pointed shuttle that
Speaker 1: made up a part of his machine was something that
Speaker 1: was part of their patent, uh, they claimed, And that
Speaker 1: claim was not accurate. It was complete bunk. So however,
Speaker 1: they think, well, let's throw a wrench into this one. However,
Speaker 1: they had all ers and Wilson didn't, so he could
Speaker 1: not fight them. So we get down to using the
Speaker 1: old idea of well, if if we can't, if we
Speaker 1: can't suppress this idea, one way, we can just kind
Speaker 1: of run them out because we've got we've got a
Speaker 1: larger reserve of cash. Yes, so uh, he had to
Speaker 1: give up half of his claim to a p Kline
Speaker 1: and Edward Lee, who at that point held the Bradshaw patent,
Speaker 1: and that was in late eighteen fifty in 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 he 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 resulted to the wound.
Speaker 1: He 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 B. Wilson's sewing machine, the
Speaker 1: best and only practical sewing machine, not larger than a
Speaker 1: ladies 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 kind of circle my little my proverbial wagons here.
Speaker 1: So he decides that he's going to protect the rights
Speaker 1: to royalties from his inventions. Uh, and anything that could
Speaker 1: trace elements of the products being sold back to one
Speaker 1: of his patents, right, Yeah, and from the Branshaw model on.
Speaker 1: They really were working on How's machine and kind of
Speaker 1: making twee tweaks to that. Uh. And then he really
Speaker 1: got angry because he saw Isaac Singer's one of Isaac
Speaker 1: Singer's sons, demonstrating their sewing machine. Yeah, and uh he said, huh,
Speaker 1: some of these elements look awfully familiar. So of course
Speaker 1: he ends up doing the responsible thing, you know. He
Speaker 1: contacts Singer and says, um, actually, I own the patent
Speaker 1: for this this machinery, this particular piece that you're using,
Speaker 1: and so by law, um I should really receive a
Speaker 1: royalty payment because you're you're using it in your device
Speaker 1: and otherwise not not compensating me for it, and so um,
Speaker 1: I'd really like that two thousand dollars the oh Me
Speaker 1: and Singer, being the very level headed professional businessman, Uh
Speaker 1: decided to um physically threaten How Yeah he Uh. Singer
Speaker 1: was known for a a really bad temper. He did
Speaker 1: some really seedy things just in business outside of this,
Speaker 1: and when it came to this, there was one incident
Speaker 1: where he allegedly threatened and nearly threw How down the
Speaker 1: steps outside his office. Like there were fisticuffs. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just yelling and through lawyers, they were physically I get
Speaker 1: the feeling that Singer is very much like the character
Speaker 1: from from Parts of the Caribbean who just says, you know,
Speaker 1: they're more like Guideline. It's he's he's not not really
Speaker 1: one to necessarily be too concerned with the actual rules
Speaker 1: of law. You know, that actor that plays Jackmi Gibb
Speaker 1: would make a great Isaac Singer. He would. But How
Speaker 1: did a super smart thing. This is where we really
Speaker 1: realized that this man was just really smart and very
Speaker 1: widely so. He, like some of these previous sad stories,
Speaker 1: really didn't have a lot of money to get into
Speaker 1: a lot of legal battles, but he figures out a
Speaker 1: way to finance some litigation. He sells half of his
Speaker 1: interest in his patent to a man named George Bliss,
Speaker 1: and Bliss manufactured machines. He built them as being House patent,
Speaker 1: even though they were pretty different from House initial design.
Speaker 1: But the money that how made off of this partnership
Speaker 1: was basically put into his litigation machine and he just
Speaker 1: started fighting people. Oh got you So, So what he
Speaker 1: was doing was he had made this partnership. He was
Speaker 1: making money off the partnership. Bliss is making money because
Speaker 1: of Howe's name. How is making money because of the
Speaker 1: partnership with Bliss. He ends up spending that money directly
Speaker 1: on lawyers to attack people who are actually infringing upon
Speaker 1: his patents. Yeah, he went after Singer with great vigor,
Speaker 1: But there were a lot of other people that were
Speaker 1: also in this mix. Uh, two of them Laroux and Blodgett.
Speaker 1: That we're a pair, that we're making a firm, that
Speaker 1: we're making machines that he thought infringed. There was actually
Speaker 1: a judgment in that case in House Favor that was
Speaker 1: the first one to be settled, and once it it
Speaker 1: was like the first of the dominoes, because then everybody
Speaker 1: else kind of panic. He went, oh, wow, he really
Speaker 1: has a case. Right, when you've got a precedent set
Speaker 1: like that, then the the it becomes clear that's going
Speaker 1: 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 to go through the process and then
Speaker 1: maybe have to be forced to hand over a larger
Speaker 1: reward in a court decision. Yeah, and how is basically
Speaker 1: happy to any settlements be like, okay, let's set up
Speaker 1: a license. Like he was willing to deal with them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he wanted to prevent other people from
Speaker 1: making their machine. This is very different from today when
Speaker 1: we were talking about similarities. But today we got a
Speaker 1: lot of what we call them patentrols. These are the
Speaker 1: folks who will get a patent and then either they
Speaker 1: don't make anything on their own, or they make something
Speaker 1: very very tiny, and then they just kind of sit
Speaker 1: around and wait for folks to infringe upon them. They
Speaker 1: threatened litigation in hopes of a sttlement um. But but
Speaker 1: what a lot of people have said about the recent
Speaker 1: patent wars is that the patent system needs to create
Speaker 1: an incentive for patent holders to license their ideas for royalties,
Speaker 1: which is 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, and it 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've 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 that 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 Alias had Junior of number three zero five Broadway
Speaker 1: was the originator of the sewing machine now extensively used.
Speaker 1: Call it 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 a core into house patent are of
Speaker 1: no practical use. He tried several years without being able
Speaker 1: to 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 there's some vitriolic I
Speaker 1: love how It's it's like a sewing machine telenovela. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of soap opera going on here. And to
Speaker 1: make it even more soap opera ish, How went after
Speaker 1: Singer for libel. But he also went after the New
Speaker 1: York Daily Tribune for printing his advertisement in the first place.
Speaker 1: So we now have How going after Singer both for
Speaker 1: patent infringement and for libel. Yeah, fantastic, just to make
Speaker 1: their relationship that much more delightful and huggy. So at
Speaker 1: this point Singer, Singer wakes up and just says, you know,
Speaker 1: you know you were right. I was wrong. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be the bigger man walk away right, not even
Speaker 1: a little. He instead just kind of goes into a
Speaker 1: rage suitable to be played only by Daniel day Lewis. Besides,
Speaker 1: he's going to destroy house Bill totally. He decides he
Speaker 1: is going to seek out every scrap of evidence on earth.
Speaker 1: He even sought out sources in Europe and China to
Speaker 1: prove that house design was not original. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: key here is that the wording in House patent was
Speaker 1: really his protection because he had patented the combination of
Speaker 1: the shuttle and the one I and the I pointed
Speaker 1: needle and how they would work together. But he never
Speaker 1: claimed to have invented either of those elements, and so
Speaker 1: his patent remained accurate and correct and not infringing on
Speaker 1: anyone else because he didn't say I invented the needle
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. 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: their entire books written about some of the more ridiculous
Speaker 1: 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 Hunts 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 um scathing article about Hunt asserting
Speaker 1: because he was like, oh yeah, I did him at
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. What was he trying to do?
Speaker 1: Legal basis? Really, but there was a trial at the
Speaker 1: Patent Office. There were hundreds of pages of testimony. I mean,
Speaker 1: it went on forever ing or dragged everybody in that
Speaker 1: he could think of that had ever touched anything that
Speaker 1: vaguely resembled the sewing machine. UM Patent Commissioner Charles Mason
Speaker 1: the ruled in favor of Elias Howe on eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: and the big part of Hunt's loss, even though he
Speaker 1: really did have a pretty good working machine, was that
Speaker 1: he didn't do anything to patent it or protected eighteen
Speaker 1: years prior. So, Uh, the Patent office can't can't rule
Speaker 1: in favor of someone who hasn't actually gone through the process. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the commissioner is equit. Are you trying to do? You
Speaker 1: didn't You don't have these rights. Hunt did try to
Speaker 1: appeal to the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia,
Speaker 1: but that did not go so well either. Mason's ruling
Speaker 1: was upheld. So then how emboldened by this victory, decides
Speaker 1: to start going after other people that he has has
Speaker 1: perceived as infringing against his patents. Yep, everybody that was
Speaker 1: selling a singer machine he went after. Wow, that was
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and he asked for preliminary injunctions
Speaker 1: against all of them to shut down sales while they
Speaker 1: went through their court cases. So he goes through this process,
Speaker 1: bringing it all the way to courts when necessary. Um,
Speaker 1: and the they what the poor singer at this point,
Speaker 1: not not really poor singer because he's kind of a jerk,
Speaker 1: but but you've got you've got how going after the
Speaker 1: people who are selling singer sewing machines, are incorporating them.
Speaker 1: Then what they're doing instead, you know, they get attacked
Speaker 1: by how they turned around. They attack singers saying, you
Speaker 1: got us into this. Yeah, you had no right to
Speaker 1: sell us the licenses that you sold us because you
Speaker 1: didn't have a right to it. You didn't own the
Speaker 1: technology that you were licensing to us, and and that's
Speaker 1: why we're in trouble. So it's so liticious. By eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, keep in mind this started in the in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifty By eighteen fifty four, Singer and how
Speaker 1: settle their lawsuit and it's announced in Scientific American. This
Speaker 1: is a big Yeah, this is not tiny news. This
Speaker 1: is like this is just like when you go on
Speaker 1: to Google News and you see like Samsung and Apple
Speaker 1: settle lawsuits. That's equivalent. Yeah, it's kind of like it
Speaker 1: reminds me of when those first like headlines were happening
Speaker 1: about no Steve Jobs and Bill Gates actually like each other.
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's like that level of wait, what we
Speaker 1: didn't think that's how this worked, except there was very
Speaker 1: little pushing down of stairs in any of them. Right, well,
Speaker 1: what what's really cool about this? Okay, so this didn't
Speaker 1: end all litigation. There was still some continuing on. But
Speaker 1: by eighteen fifties six, we get the president of Grover
Speaker 1: and Baker, which was one of the companies involved in
Speaker 1: the suits, that were, uh, that we're evolving, Elias How,
Speaker 1: I feel like we should back up because we skipped that.
Speaker 1: People tried to then sue How for improving Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so How basically at this point was the you know,
Speaker 1: the czar of the sewing machine in industry. He owned
Speaker 1: the patent to the biggest chunk of it and was
Speaker 1: licensing those out, and he thought, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: could really tweak that original design as well. But every
Speaker 1: tweak he made other people claim they had already made.
Speaker 1: So then he was getting sued by people for patent
Speaker 1: infringement for improving on his original design. Okay, so now's
Speaker 1: the litigation festival Basically, now you've got people saying, all right, well,
Speaker 1: these improvements you're making, we've already made and we've already patented.
Speaker 1: So it's become a huge mess. By eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: you get the president of Grover and Baker, which was
Speaker 1: one of the companies that was involved in these cases
Speaker 1: against how about these improvements to the original designs and
Speaker 1: comes up with a concept called the combination, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, these days we would call this a patent pool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a patent pools essentially when you get a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different stakeholders who all own different patents that
Speaker 1: are involved in the same general technology to essentially come
Speaker 1: to an agreement saying, all right, we're gonna pull all
Speaker 1: these patents together, and as long as we are all
Speaker 1: officially part of this group and we all agree to
Speaker 1: operate by these rules, we're not going to sue the
Speaker 1: pants off each other whenever we make an improvement to
Speaker 1: that technology or incorporate that technology into our products. Yes,
Speaker 1: make suring that everyone's getting the royalties that they deserve. Exactly. So.
Speaker 1: 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. So
Speaker 1: he 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, than you
Speaker 1: feel like you have the most to lose in that
Speaker 1: kind of agreement. He definitely felt that way, but eventually
Speaker 1: he did agree to it. He had made some pretty
Speaker 1: heavy stipulations and the other parties agreed. Basically, he was
Speaker 1: going to get a five dollar royalty on every sewing
Speaker 1: machine that was sold in the US, and for every
Speaker 1: sewing 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. This is this is a 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 eighteen hundreds money. Yeah, that's way more. But he
Speaker 1: would be a kajillionaire, crazy crazy, that's accurate 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, expire, 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 his 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 a lie us how Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you see that name all over the He was exceptional
Speaker 1: at marketing, very much again, kind of like Edison, who
Speaker 1: was brilliant in many ways, and one of the big
Speaker 1: was that he was a very smart businessman and marketer.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is again you can see the parallels
Speaker 1: with modern patent wars. Everything from the cooperation of various
Speaker 1: companies to make sure that business can continue, the arguments
Speaker 1: that patent litigation harms innovation, that that patent that's sitting
Speaker 1: on patent's harms innovation. These are not new ideas. No,
Speaker 1: you gotta look at you know, early to mid nineteenth
Speaker 1: century and you can see it all there as well.
Speaker 1: So very interesting that there's so much in common with
Speaker 1: what we see today. Guys, thank you for joining me
Speaker 1: on this classic episode of tax stuff. I hope you
Speaker 1: found it as fascinating as I did. It always is
Speaker 1: interesting to me to see how these older technologies actually
Speaker 1: ended up having some very interesting modern problems associated with them,
Speaker 1: like this whole patent war situation. If you guys would
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