attached to a
needle arm, and consequently could not pass entirely through the
material, but must retreat through the same hole by which it
entered. From this I saw that I could not make a stitch similar to
handwork, but must have some other mode of fastening the thread on
the underside, and among other possible methods of doing this, the
chainstitch occurred to me as a likely means of accomplishing the
end.

I next endeavored to discover how this stitch was or could be made,
and from the woodcut I saw that the driving shaft which had the
driving wheel on the outer end, passed along under the cloth plate
of the machine. I knew that the mechanism which made the stitch
must be connected with and actuated by this driving shaft. After
studying the position and relations of the needle and shaft with
each other, I conceived the idea of the revolving hook on the end
of the shaft, which might take hold of the thread and manipulate it
into a chainstitch. My ideas were, of course, very crude and
indefinite, but it will be seen that I then had the correct
conception of the invention afterwards embodied in my machine.[68]

[Illustration: Figure 39.--ONE OF THE FIRST COMMERCIAL MACHINES produced
by the Willcox & Gibbs Sewing Machine Co. in 1857, this machine bears no
serial number, although the name "James E. A. Gibbs" is inscribed in two
places on the cloth plate. It was used as the patent model for Gibbs'
improvement on his 1857 patent issued the following year on August 10,
1858. (Smithsonian photo P. 6393.)]

Gibbs had no immediate interest in the sewing machine other than to
satisfy his curiosity. He did not think of it again until January 1856
when he was visiting his father in Rockbridge County, Virginia. While in
a tailor's shop there, he happened to see a Singer machine. Gibbs was
very much impressed, but thought the machine entirely too heavy,
complicated, and cumbersome, and the price exorbitant. It was then that
he recalled the machine he had devised. Remembering how simple it was,
he decided to work in earnest to produce a less-expensive type of sewing
machine.

Gibbs had little time to spend on this invention since his family was
dependent upon him for support, but he managed to find time at night and
during inclement weather. In contemporary references, Gibbs is referred
to as a farmer, but since he is also reported to have