Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
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Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
WHEELER & WILSON
In 1841 Allen B. Wilson, an inventive seventeen-year-old tinkered with the idea of making his own sewing machine. An apprentice cabinet maker at the family business in Pittsfield, Massachusetts he was plagued with poor health and a nervous disposition. He had the spare time during his illnesses to build working models of his ideas.
Wilson's first ideas were nothing like the machines today. His feed mechanism for tugging the work along was a bar that gripped and pulled the work. By November of 1850 (a year before Isaac Singer), he had gained the first of many patents for his sewing machine.
His shuttle was a double-pointed affair that produced two stitches with every back-and-forward movement. However from these early ideas he then produced several startling and innovative pieces of engineering and within 24 months he had produced a world-beating machine.
Allen B Wilson's best idea was the rotary hook mechanism. Simply, it went round and round and round, in smooth never-ending circles. On its travels it picked up the top thread from the needle with a little point, twisted with a thread from the bobbin and let it go. So simple and smooth that it would last a lifetime. In fact it ended up lasting forever because most machines today still use his simple mechanism.
His second stroke of genius is more in dispute. He needed a better method of moving the cloth through the machine. At the time people were trying rows of pins and other silly ideas. He came up with a set of teeth that appeared, as if by magic, from under the work, moved the work forward and then disappeared again. People looked on in amazement at this black art.
Coincidentally the Grover & Baker sewing machine used a very similar method of moving the work forward. No one would back down so it all ended up in court. Allen B. Wilson had already been cheated out of one of his earlier patents when Kline & Lee convinced him that his double pointed shuttle was really a copy of their 1848 Bradshaw Patent. In that legal case, Wilson gave up without much of a fight and allowed Kline & Lee to take half his patent rights for the shuttle. Eventually he relinquished full rights to the shuttle.
Having lost that engagement made him determined not to lose again. When he came up against Grover & Baker and the fight for the rights to the four-motion-feed he was prepared and ready to fight to the death. He also had the money for his day in court. After a ferocious scuffle with Grover & Baker’s formidable legal team headed by their future president, Orlando B. Potter, he won. This protected his four-motion-feed for many years against any patent infringements and stamped his name in history. Well sewing machine history anyway!
On a business trip to New York in 1850 Nathaniel Wheeler, a keen investor in new ideas, was introduced to the 26 year old inventor, Wilson, interestingly through his old partners in the double pointed shuttle, Kline & Lee.
Nathaniel Wheeler was an investor working as manager in the Warren, Wheeler & Woodruff Co in Watertown, Connecticut and looking for new ideas to expand. It became obvious to Wheeler that Wilson was the brains and after placing an order with Kline & Lee for some of their sewing machines he talked Wilson into coming back to Watertown, Connecticut. Wilson showed Wheeler his new rotary hook system and Wheeler saw its immediate potential. Wheeler dropped the old shuttle mechanism from Wilson’s former partners and got Wilson to spend all his efforts on preparing a patent model for the rotary hook.
When Wilson was working in Fulton Street, New York, he worked with two partners, George P Woodruff & Alanson Warren. Nathaniel Wheeler was happy for the men behind the ideas to come with Wilson and form a new business, Wheeler and Wilson, to produce sewing machines for the masses.
The 1865 Dubuque City Directory listed 212 Main.
The 1868-69 Dubuque City Directory listed 4 and 5 Facade Building. The 1870-1871 Dubuque City Directory gave the address of this business as the southeast corner of 9th and Locust.
The 1875-1876 Dubuque City Directory gave 153 9th.
According to the 1883 Dubuque City Directory, this business was located at 9th above Main.
The 1884-1885 Dubuque City Directory listed 157 9th.
The 1922 Dubuque Telephone Directory listed 238 W. 8th.
See: PATENTS
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Source:
Wheeler and Wilson Sewing Machines--http://www.sewalot.com/wheeler%20&%20wilson%20sewing%20machines.htm