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 o ...

Rhône The Rhône ( , ; Occitan language, Occitan: ''Ròse''; Franco-Provençal, Arpitan: ''Rôno'') is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and Southeastern France before dischargi ...

- 5 July 1857 in

Amplepuis Amplepuis () is a commune in the Rhône department in eastern France. Demography See also Communes of the Rhône department The following is a list of the 208 communes of the Rhône department of France. This list does not includes the ...

) was a French

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

, who is attributed with the invention of the first

sewing machine Diagram of a modern sewing machine Animation of a modern sewing machine as it stitches A sewing machine is a machine used to sew fabric and materials together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolutio ...

that replicated

sewing Sewing is the craft of fastening pieces of textiles together using 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 fabric, archaeo ...

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

Early life

In 1795, his family moved to

. Thimonnier was the eldest of seven children. He studied for a while in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, 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 Saint-Étienne (; Franco-Provençal: ''Sant-Etiève''), also written St. Etienne, is a city and the prefecture of the Loire département, in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regi ...

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

mining engineer Mining engineering is the extraction of minerals from the ground. It is associated with many other disciplines, such as mineral processing, exploration, excavation, geology, metallurgy, geotechnical engineering and surveying. A mining engineer m ...

, 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 sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

for his machine was issued to them on 17 July 1830 in the names of both men, supported by the French government. One important early investor of Barthélemy Thimonnier was Louis-Antoine Beaunier of the Saint-Étienne miners' school. 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.

Sewing machine riot

The same year, he opened (with partners) the first machine-based clothing manufacturing company in the world. It was supposed to create army uniforms. A workshop was established in the rue de Sèvres in Paris with around 80 sewing machines in total. However in 1831, 150–200 tailors confronted them at the factory destroying dozens of machines in the process, reportedly fearful of losing work and lower wages following the issuing of the patent. According to ''Moniteur'', It is unclear whether "Gombert" is mistakenly referring to Barthélemy Thimonnier or referring to one of his partners, funders or employees. A month later the ''Gazette des Tribunaux'' ('' The Court Gazette'') refers to it as the house of "Mr. Petit". This is referring to Maison Germain Petit & Cie, the company established by Barthélemy Thimonnier & Auguste Ferrand. They also claim mechanic destruction was prevented by the

National Guard National guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. ...

and are highly critical towards the attempts. ''The Court Gazette'', a criminal justice magazine, often directly sourced from governmental accounts. Given the high level of political resistance at the time (see

Canut revolts The Canut revolts () is the collective name for the major revolts by Lyonnais silk workers () which occurred in 1831, 1834 and 1848. They were among the first well-defined worker uprisings of the period known as the Industrial Revolution. The Fi ...

) it could be unlikely that any success of the destruction would be stated publicly by governmental sources for fear of inspiring further actions. The statement went onto note the following, According to a later source, Thimonnier retired from the company the same year, shortly following the riot. The entire company was then fully dissolved a few years later, following the death of principal investor, Mr.Beaunier of The Saint-Étienne miners' school. A model of the machine is exhibited at the

London Science Museum The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...

. 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.

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, is a large global exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specific site for a perio ...

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

Early life

Invention of the sewing machine

Sewing machine riot

Later life

Further reading

References