From the
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
VOLUME 6 NEW-YORK JANUARY 4, 1851 NUMBER 16
Wilson's Sewing Machine
In number ten of our last volume we illustrated and described the sewing machine of Mr. Allen Benjamin Wilson; since that time a patent has been granted for it and
it is now in successful operation on the next floor above our office.
The Scientific American has illustrated and described more sewing machines than any other periodical, but of all the machines which have appeared in our columns, none can equal this one in simplicity and compactness. It is justly allowed to be the best one ever invented.
Image a small machine which can be carried in a man's hat, or even in a decent sized overcoat pocket,
sewing with more dexterity and accuracy than the most experienced needle-woman and then you can sew curved or straight seams and its stitch does not rip out. It can be set to sew long or short stitches just by a turn with a screw-driver and taking all things into consideration, we believe that it is one of the most important inventions of the age. We will yet live to see it forming part of every household forniture, for it is undoubtedly a family labor-saving machine. Every family which has much sewing, should have one, for it is not expensive. E.E. Lee & Co., No.128 Fulton Street, are the assignees of the patentee and by them it is now offered to public, for the sale of rights, &c.
The above sewing machines are models from the Patent Office where inventors used to deposit their models with the relative applications for Letters Patent. The 1850 Patent Model at the time the article was made, probably was at the Patent Office. The small machine which can be carried in a man's hat, or even in a decent sized overcoat pocket, in successful operation on the next floor above the Scientific American office, it was probably the 1851 Patent Model not yet surrendered to the Patent Office