a Lyons dyer, was born at Arbreste (Department
of the Rhone) in 1793. He learnt tailoring,
and worked at the trade first at Amplepuis
and then at Saint Etienne. The manufacturers
of Tarare get a great deal of crochet
embroidery done in the mountains of the Lyonnais.
Thimonnier, while watching the young
women at work, conceived the first idea of
the sewing machine. Ho brooded over it
and worked incessantly at it for four long
years, losing his credit, ruining himself, but
triumphantly resolving the problem. In 1830
he took out a patent for an apparatus
executing chain-stitch by mechanical means.

An inspector-general of mines. M. Beaunier,
then residing at Saint Etienne, saw the machine,
and at a glance comprehended its importance.
He took the inventor to Paris. Thimonnier,
one Ferrand, Germain Petit and Company of
Paris, entered into partnership for working
the apparatus. In 1831, there was to be
seen in the Rue de Sèvres, a factory in which
eighty wooden sewing machines were at work:
they made soldiers' clothing by machinery.
Now, machinery suppresses manual labour,
and the workman looks no further than that;
the plain fact strikes him, and he will hear no
more. Thimonnier's sewing machines were
broken in 1831, exactly as the first threshing
machines were destroyed in England by riotous
agricultural labourers.

Thimonnier ran away. A few months afterwards,
M. Beaunier's death broke up the
partnership with Germain Petit and Company.
In 1834, Thimonnier returned to Paris, and
used his machine to do tailoring work, at the
same time trying to improve it. In 1836,
reduced to utter poverty, he returned to his
native town. He travelled on foot, says one
of his biographers (M. Meyssin, of Lyons)
with his machine on his back, and kept
soul and body together by exhibiting its
performance as a curiosity. Retiring to
Amplepuis, he constructed several machines, and
sold them with very great difficulty. In 1845,
the original contrivance already made two
hundred stitches a minute. At that period,
an intelligent manufacturer, M. Magnin. of
Villefranche, offered his co-operation, which
was accepted; the partners sold machines at
fifty francs (two pounds) each. In 1848, as
testified by a patent, Thimonnier's machine
executed three hundred stitches per minute;
it embroidered, and sewed not only muslin but
cloth, and even leather.

The revolution of February, 1848, checked
the invention, just as it was gaining ground.
Thimonnier sold his patent for England to a
company at Manchester, and sent an improved
specimen to the London Exhibition of 1851.
The machine was delayed on the road, and
did not reach its destination until after the
jury had given their awards. After thirty
years of struggle, toil, and want, Thimonnier
died in poverty at Amplepuis, on the fifth of
August, 1857, at the age of sixty-four. He
shared the fate of many inventors. In
1832, in his eighty-first year, there expired at
the Invalides, forgotten by all, the Marquis
Claude Jouffroy d'Albans, the inventor of
steamboats. On the tenth of August, 1807,
the banks of the Hudson had rung with shouts
in acclamation of Fulton's triumph. France,
says M. de Parville, had sown; America reaped.
It was not till ten years after America and
England that France possessed her first
steamer, the Elise, which for a while ran
regularly between Rouen and Elbeuf. The
sewing machine also, like the steamboat,
after having been invented in France, returned
thither from America. M. de Parville naturally
regrets that the circumstance should be so
frequently forgotten.

While Thimonnier was struggling with
poverty, his machine was being improved across
the Ocean. In 1845, an American, Elias Howe,
took out a patent for a sewing machine with
two threads, needle, and shuttle. In 1851 the
jury at the Crystal Palace were registering
Elias Howe's improvement, whilst Thimonnier's
machine was lingering on the way. Soon,
nothing was talked of but the American
machines, and from 1855 the Continent was
inundated with them. We now possess excellent
English, French, and German models; the old
world has taken her revenge. Well-made in
general, simple, giving marvellous results of
speed, sewing machines have found their way
everywhere; into factories, work-rooms, drawing-rooms.
They have brought about a
complete revolution in the process of sewing. A
good seamstress could make her twenty-five or
thirty stitches per minute; a sewing machine
will now do eight hundred. It is an increase
of speed unparalleled in industrial history. The
economical results immediately showed
themselves by a general drop in the price of the
most essential articles of clothing. We have
all reaped the benefit of the invention; and
how many have ever heard of Thimonnier's
name?

And now for the physical and moral effects.
The commercial results are palpable, immense;
the hygienic consequences are the reverse of
advantageous. For, the sewing machine is a
tool, and so is the needle. But the needle is
so light, so essentially feminine; the machine
so heavy, so fatiguing to work! It illustrates
the mechanical axiom, "What you gain in speed,
you expend in strength." You get on wonderfully
faster than with the needle, but you must
employ quite a different degree of force to work
this charming little implement. Has the idea
ever struck anybody at any time or place?

One would hardly think it, to see poor girls
fixed to their sewing machine as no other
motive power ever was before. Riding-school
horses are changed every three hours; omnibus
horses every two hours; but here is no change.
For ten or twelve hours a day, and sometimes
more, the feet have to press alternately on the
pedals, and the frame has to be shaken by the
same continuous and regular movements.

The object of all machinery ought to be to
replace manual labour by mechanical labour; but
sewing by machinery leads to the very reverse.