Sew a button on a shirt, mending a pair of pants, darned a sock ... The stitching has been with us since we spend most of our time to dress. As we all know, the beautiful myth of Genesis says that it happened when God threw us out of paradise for eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. In doing so, learning is not learned much, but started to feel ashamed of our nakedness. And since then, we need the clothes to the point where it has gone from being a curse to a business. Course, is there anything that is not?
Well, the clothing would be nothing without sewing, an activity that, at least from our grandmothers, is synonymous with smart. Or do we say this "that does not know or sew a button?
With all the essentials that is, the sewing was not technological concern to mid-nineteenth century, when a humble mechanic Massachusetts, Elias Howe, with 21 years designed the first sewing machine operating in the poor attic where he lived (he was not the inventor actually, as others had advanced, as Walter Hunt). Having no money, he went to live with an old classmate, a man named Fisher, who lent him $ 500 he needed to build the machine. And in 1845 he finished. Howe said he could sew strips of fabric 5 before Boston's most experienced tailors sew one. Clearly, Howe won.
A sewing machine! That will remove cried many bread and jobs to many workers! We need to break the machine! Howe had to retire after his victory with his tail between his legs.
In 1846 he bought a ticket to England and was in London where he was issued the patent for his invention. To return to the United States had to pawn her sewing machine prototype in order to afford the ticket. He still had a few more years of poverty and struggle for your machine. But as often happens in almost all Hollywood films, the final recovered your machine, built many and became a millionaire. However, the improved and who became one of the most popular gadgets was Isaac Merrit Singer. Yes sir, that of Singer sewing machines.
Before becoming the millionaire manufacturer of sewing machines that bear his name, Singer was a poor but honest mechanic in a workshop in Boston, the same city where Howe had invented the machine. Just above the simple apartment where he lived lived a man named Phelps, who was engaged to build machines to sew. Singer was interested in them because he saw that there was a lot of money and began working on a way to improve those already in the market. He teamed up with two friends, who lent him $ 40 so he could bring his work to fruition. When finally your machine, it was time to test ... and it did not work! His friends left him and he was mulling over what could have failed. Could not think what could have happened and sulky and ashamed, returned to his home. When I went down the street suddenly occurred to him. He ran the workshop, tremblingly adjusted the tension screw, and the machine worked.
Of course one thing to have an invention that works and quite another to become a millionaire with him. Singer who provided the money was his partner Edwin Clark, who introduced sales techniques that have not left the business since then. Clark thought it would be a good idea to launch the magazine Singer Gazette, to be distributed free to purchasers of the machine, which would be issued new uses and products of its sewing machines.
Similarly, it was Clark who invented the payment in installments: the Singer sold giving a $ 5 entry and then a comfortable monthly installments with interest. It was also Clark who invented it to collect old sewing machines and give a discount for this to buy a Singer. As if that were not enough, they won the blessings of American churches Singers offering a low price for their groups and convinced the pairing that sewing machines give more time to their wives.
Using these techniques, sales in 1861 Singer sewing machines sold more than any other, and six years later Singer Corporation became the first multinational corporation.