Helen Augusta Blanchard
Helen Augusta Blanchard was born in 1840 into a wealthy family in Maine. Always mechanically minded, Blanchard's inventive skills came to the fore after her family lost its fortune. She received her first patent in 1873 for inventing a sewing machine that sewed zigzg stitches or "over-sewed" fabric edges. The first workable sewing machine was probably invented in the 18th century and sewing machine history generally credits names such as Elias Howe and Isaac Singer as inventors of the modern sewing machine. A French woman, Caroline Garcin, and a clock-maker, M. Adam, had also patented a design for a single-pedal machine in 1872 that was designed specifically to counteracted the sexual arousal that supposedly afflicted seamstresses using the dual pedal machines.
The machine capable of sewing the zigzag stitch is frequently attributed to the the Necchi and Pfaff companies, but Helen Blanchard's, filed between 1873-75, all predate the Pfaff and Necchi machines.
Helen Blanchard's other patents included several improvements of the sewing machine, a pencil sharpener as well as elastic seams for clothes and gores for shoes. Helen Augusta Blanchard received twenty-eight patents between 1873 and 1915. She died in 1922.
Athena Greek Goddess of Mechanical Skills
References:
Women Invent: Two Centuries of Discoveries That Have Shaped Our World by Susan Casey (Chicago Review Press, 1997) p.6
Mothers and Daughters of Invention by Autumn Stanley (Rutgers University Press, 1995) pp. 353-356.
Patently Female by Ethlie Ann Vare and Greg Pracek (John Wiley, 2002) p. 53.
Web Sites:
Helen Augusta BlanchardProlific Female Inventors of the Industrial Era
History of the Sewing Machine
Sex and the Sewing Machine
OTHER INNOVATIONS AND INVENTIONS
