Barthélemy Thimonnier (19 August 1793 in

L'Arbresle L'Arbresle () is a commune of the Rhône department, eastern France. Composer Claude Terrasse and inventor Barthélemy Thimonnier were born in L'Arbresle. Population See also * Communes of the Rhône department The following is a list of ...

Rhône The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...

- 5 July 1857 in Amplepuis) was a French inventor, who is attributed with the invention of the first sewing machine that replicated

sewing Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a sewing needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era. Before the invention of spinning yarn or weaving fab ...

by hand. He was born in L'Arbresle, in Rhône in France.

Early life

In 1795, his family moved to Amplepuis. Thimonnier was the eldest of seven children. He studied for a while in

Lyon Lyon,, ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, third-largest city and Urban area (France), second-largest metropolitan area of F ...

, before going to work as a tailor in Panissières. Barthelemy Thimonnier married an embroideress in January 1822. In 1823, he settled in a suburb of Saint-Étienne and worked as a

tailor A tailor is a person who makes or alters clothing, particularly in men's clothing. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the term to the thirteenth century. History Although clothing construction goes back to prehistory, there is evidence of ...

there.

Invention of the sewing machine

Though the first sewing machine needle was patented by

Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal Charles Fredrick Wiesenthal (1726–1789) was a German physician and inventor who was awarded the patent for the first known mechanical device for sewing in 1755. One might argue that he invented the sewing machine. He was born in the state of Bra ...

in 1755, in 1829 Thimonnier reinvented the sewing machine. In 1830 he signed a contract with Auguste Ferrand, a

mining engineer Mining in the engineering discipline is the extraction of minerals from underneath, open pit, above or on the ground. Mining engineering is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, and ...

, who made the requisite drawings and submitted a patent application. The

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

for his machine was issued on 17 July 1830 in the names of both men, supported by the French government. The same year, he opened (with partners) the first machine-based clothing manufacturing company in the world. It was supposed to create army uniforms. However, the

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

was burned down, reportedly by workers fearful of losing work following the issuing of the patent. (See also:

Luddite The Luddites were a secret oath-based organisation of English textile workers in the 19th century who formed a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery. The group is believed to have taken its name from Ned Ludd, a legendary weaver ...

) A model of the machine is exhibited at the London Science Museum. The machine is made of wood and uses a barbed needle which passes downward through the cloth to grab the thread and pull it up to form a loop to be locked by the next loop. The earliest sewing machine was actually patented by Thomas Saint in 1790. So Thimonnier's machine was not the first. Saint's contribution was not made public until 1874 when William Newton Wilson, himself a sewing machine manufacturer, found the drawings in the London Patent Office and built a machine which worked following some adjustments to the looper. So, in 1790 Thomas Saint had invented a machine with an overhanging arm, a feed mechanism (adequate for the short lengths of leather he intended it for), a vertical needle bar and a looper. The London Science Museum has the model that Wilson built from Saint's drawings.

Later life

Thimonnier then returned to Amplepuis and supported himself as a tailor again, while searching for improvements to his machine. He obtained new patents in 1841, 1845, and 1847 for new models of sewing machine. However, despite having won prizes at

World Fair A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...

s, and being praised by the press, use of the machine did not spread. Thimonnier's financial situation remained difficult, and he died in poverty at the age of 63. The ''Thimonnier'' sewing machine company, created after his death, existed up to the 20th century.

References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thimonnier, Barthelemy 1793 births 1857 deaths 19th-century French inventors People from L'Arbresle Sewing machine brands