Elias Howe

Elias Howe (1819–1867) was an American inventor whose 1846 patent covered a sewing machine using a lockstitch, an eye-pointed needle, and a shuttle.

Lockstitch: A sewing stitch formed by interlocking a needle thread and a bobbin thread within the fabric. Howe’s machine used this stitch to make durable seams.
United States patent 4,750: The patent issued to Elias Howe in 1846 for improvements in sewing machinery. It records the central claims associated with Howe’s machine.
Isaac Merritt Singer: An American inventor and businessman who helped popularize practical sewing machines and built a major manufacturing company. Singer’s machine and commercial success brought him into conflict with Howe’s patent rights.
Sewing machine war: A series of patent disputes among American sewing-machine manufacturers in the mid-nineteenth century. Howe’s lockstitch patent made him a principal claimant in the disputes.
Barthelemy Thimonnier: A French tailor who patented a chain-stitch sewing machine in 1830. Thimonnier’s earlier machine shows that mechanized sewing predated Howe’s patent.
Sewing machine: A machine that joins fabric or other materials with stitches made by mechanically driven needles and thread. Howe’s invention became a defining early design in this broader machine family.
Walter Hunt: An American inventor who developed an early lockstitch sewing machine in the 1830s. Hunt’s earlier design formed part of the contested history surrounding sewing-machine patents.
Allen B. Wilson: An American inventor who developed important sewing-machine mechanisms, including a rotary hook and four-motion feed. Wilson’s innovations made him another central figure in the sewing-machine patent conflict.
Sewing Machine Combination: A patent pool formed in 1856 by leading American sewing-machine manufacturers. The pool included Howe’s patent and replaced repeated lawsuits with shared licensing.
Chain stitch: A stitch formed from loops of thread, each linked to the next on the same side of the fabric. It differs from the two-thread lockstitch used in Howe’s machine.

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ZipperRelated: His 1851 patent described an early automatic garment fastener, decades before practical zippers.