The White Sewing Machine was the first sewing machine from the

White Sewing Machine Company The White Sewing Machine Company was a sewing machine company founded in 1858 in Templeton, Massachusetts, by Thomas H. White and based in Cleveland, Ohio, since 1866. History Founded as the White Manufacturing Company it took the White S ...

. It used a

vibrating shuttle A vibrating shuttle is a bobbin driver design used in home lockstitch sewing machines during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It supplanted earlier ''transverse'' shuttle designs, but was itself supplanted ...

bobbin driver Throughout history, lockstitch A lockstitch is the most common mechanical stitch made by a sewing machine. The term "single needle stitching", often found on dress shirt labels, refers to lockstitch. Structure The lockstitch uses two threads ...

design. For that reason, and to differentiate it from the later

White Family Rotary The White Family Rotary or White FR, later White Rotary or White Rotary Electric, was the first rotary hook sewing machine produced by the White Sewing Machine Company The White Sewing Machine Company was a sewing machine company founded ...

that used a

rotary hook The rotary hook (aka rotating hook) is a bobbin driver design used in lockstitch sewing machines of the 19th and 20th century and beyond. It triumphed over competing designs because it can run at higher speeds with less vibration. Rotary hooks an ...

design instead, it came to be known as the "White Vibrating Shuttle" or "White VS". In 1879 it cost

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

50 to US$125 (US$1097 to US$2744 adjusted) depending on which table or cabinet it was to be mounted in. The White VS continued in production, with improvements, until the early 1900s. There was also a 3/4-sized version called the "White Peerless".

Production

Versions

The White VS evolved over time through these versions:

Portable versions

White developed a 3/4-sized version for the sake of portability, exactly as

Singer Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

was developing the 3/4-sized model VS-3/28/128. It was called the 'Peerless' and its evolution tracked that of its full-sized parent:

Shuttle changes

The first versions of the White Sewing Machine used a "boat" shuttle that was comparable to those used in contemporary transverse shuttle machines. In 1886 the shuttle was changed to a bullet shape, with a thin rod in the interior upon which the bobbin rotates. The change was probably prompted by the bullet shuttle used in the new Singer

Vibrating Shuttle A vibrating shuttle is a bobbin driver design used in home lockstitch sewing machines during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It supplanted earlier ''transverse'' shuttle designs, but was itself supplanted ...

machine, invented the year before, itself a derivative of the White machine. Still later, the shuttle was refined again for the Peerless machines.

Badged variants

White produced VS machines under several different badges, in addition to the Peerless. These included 'Franklin' (same name as a Singer model 27 clone produced later), 'Mason D', 'Minnesota E', and 'Queen'.

History

D'Arcy Porter and George W. Baker designed the machine and are named as inventors on most of the six original US patents, dated 1876–1877, that cover it. The company literature would later look back adoringly on them, calling them "two of hite'sbest mechanics" who had "perfected a new type of sewing machine, far superior to anything then on the market"."Since 1876 - A Few Facts about the White Sewing Machine Company" (1941)), retrieved 2010-08-05 from the Smithsonian Museum
/ref> At the time of its development, the machine was the White Sewing Machine Company's flagship product—so much so that it was simply named the "White Sewing Machine". Only later it was called the "White Vibrating Shuttle", when a

model named the

was added to the product line.

References

External links

{{sewing Sewing machines