BRITISH PATENT 162 - 1857
162 William Edward Newton, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex, Civil Engineer, for an invention for certain improvements in sewing machines.
The object of the first of these improvements in sewing machines is to obtain an universal feeding movement to feed the cloth or other material to be sewed in any and every direction and to enable the direction of the movement to be changed as often as may be desired.This part of the invention consists chiefly in confining and giving motion to the material between the face of a rotating disc or plate through and in line with or nearly in line with whose axis the needle or needles work and the periphery of a roller whose axis is nearly or quite perpendicular to the axis of tho said disc or plate, and radial thereto, the said roller being movable around the needle so as to bear upon the material on any side of the needle. Upon motion being communicated either to the disc or to the roller the material will be moved forward between them in a direction parallel with the plane in which any portion of the roller rotates. The roller, when not having the motion imparted directly to it in the first place, receives rotary motion from the disc through the friction of the material. This improvement is applicable to those machines in which the stitch is formed with two threads by the combined operations of a needle and shuttle or of two needles or to machines in which it is formed with a single thread by a needle and looper.
The second improvement ls only applicable to those machines in which the stitch is made with two threads by the combined operations of the needle and shuttle. This improvement consists in providing for any slight variation of the direction of the motion of the shuttle that may be necessary to bring the shuttle in proper relation to the needle by fitting the shuttle with grooves to run upon two parallel ways or guides that are adjusted laterally on a box or block which is adjustable in a direction perpendicular to the adjustment of the said ways or guides. A communication.
Letters Patent sealed. January 20, 1857