The Singer Sewing Machine
The sewing machine was an American invention that swiftly found markets abroad. The Singer Manufacturing Company, the dominant firm by the time the Civil War began, exported sewing machines to markets as far-flung as Ireland, Russia, China, and India. The company also moved some manufacturing operations abroad, producing 200,000 machines annually at a Scottish plant that employed 6,000 workers. Singer’s advertising rightly boasted of the international appeal of a product that the company dubbed “The Universal Sewing Machine.” © Collection of the New-York Historical Society.