Stone to Silicon

Tools & manufacturing · 1846

Sewing machine

Lockstitch by machine makes clothing and shoes an industry.

Elias Howe patented a lockstitch sewing machine in 1846, and Isaac Singer's 1851 design became a mass consumer product. Singer made hundreds of thousands a year by the 1870s.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

US utility patents granted since 1790 Latest: 352k patents per year (2020) Source: Our World in Data