1832 | Technology
Technology
A modern sewing machine devised by New York inventor Walter Hunt, 36, has a needle with an eye in its point that pushes thread through cloth to interlock with a second thread carried by a shuttle. Hunt does not obtain a patent, and when he suggests in 1838 that his daughter Caroline, then 15, go into business making corsets with his machine, she will protest that it would put needy seamstresses out of work (see Thimmonier, 1829; Howe, 1843; Hunt's safety pin, 1849).
U.S. interests erect a plant for producing seamed steel tubing like that devised 8 years ago in Britain for transmitting gas.