A NEW AND IMPROVED SEWING MACHINE
Year: 1855

page_text: COMPLETE SPECIFICATION filed by the said William Meyerstein at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition and Declara-
tion, on the 3rd August 1855, pursuant to the 9th Section of the Patent
Law Amendment Act, 1852.
TO ALL TO WHOM THOSE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, WILLIAM
MEYERSTEIN, of 47, Friday Street, in the City of London, in the County of
Middlesex, in England, send greeting.
WHEREAS I am in possession of an Invention for "A NEW AND IMPROVED
SEWING MACHINE," and have petitioned Her Majesty to grant unto me, my
executors, administrators, and assigns, Her Royal Letters Patent for the same,
and have made solemn declaration that I verily believe myself to be the first
and true Inventor thereof:
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said William Meyerstein, do hereby declare
that the following complete Specification and annexed Drawing, under my
hand and seal, fully describes and ascertains the nature of my said Invention,
and the manner in which the same is to be performed, for which purpose I
make the following statement, that is to say, in order to understand better my
description I refer continually to the annexed Drawing:-
Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 in this Drawing represent that part of my machine
which does the sewing; and Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 illustrate that part which

page_text: advances regularly the material which is to be sewn. Those parts are inti-
mately connected, but in this Drawing they are separated for the sake of a
clearer explanation. Fig. 1 and Fig. 3 are birds-eye views of the mechanism,
in which Fig. 3 must lay beneath Fig. 1; and Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 are the side
views of the resp. parts.
I will now first describe the manner in which the sewing is performed,
referring only to Fig. 1 and Fig. 2. A is the needle, worked up and down by
the lever D, E, rolling in a fusee F; the position when it is down is marked
d, c. When by means of the (in Fig. 2 represented) wheel and pinion the
axletree G is set in motion, it will not only move the needle A, but also, trough
the arms C, C, (Fig. 1,) the sledge B, which is filled with thread. The sledge
B will arrive at A when the needle is down; the sledge (as shown in b, Fig. 2,)
will seize and pass over the thread which the needle carries down, and therefore
when the needle goes up again its own thread must seize the thread from the
sledge, press it into the material which shall be sewn, and so form the seam.
To allow the thread from the needle to pass freely over the sledge, the two
leading arms of the latter C, C, (see Fig. 1,) which have a spring at their end,
are pushed and held back successively by a little bridge. In this way the
process of sewing is accomplished, which to resume it consist simply in laying
one thread along the bottom of the material which is to be sewn, and to let the
other thread in the needle go down and seize it from stitch to stitch. The seam
will look nearly alike on both sides. That part of the mechanism advancing
the material which is to be sewn is represented in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. K, K,
is an arm of the lever H, H, which is moved by the eccentric wheel N on the
axletree of the machine. The arm K, K, carries on its upper part a slider cut
like a file to hold the material, which latter is pressed down to it by the long
spring lever M, M. This lever is alternately pressed down and let loose by
another eccentric wheel O (see Fig. 3) in such a way, that it presses on the
material when this is advancing, and lets it loose when it is going back. The
material (cloth, linen, or what it may be,) can consequently only advance, for,
not being pressed down when K, K, falls back, as shown in h, k, Fig. 4, it
remains after each stitch in the place to which it was carried. The spring b,
Fig. 3, throws the lever H, H, back, and the screw P regulates its greater or
lesser movement, and through it the length of the stitches. They can vary
from to one inch in length.
The sewing machine as here described works better and quicker, and is
(what is very important) less liable to come out of order than any other
machine yet existing.

page_text: What I claim as my Invention, and desire to secure by Her Majesty's
Royal Letters Patent, is, the whole mechanism of sewing as given in the above
description, including the circular motion of the sledge, and the apparatus for
advancing the material which is to be sewn, all of which is new, and my own
Invention, and not in use by any other person or persons, to the best of my
knowledge and belief.
(L.S.) WM MEYERSTEIN.