from wire pins on a moving wheel.
The needle of the machine was attached to a horizontal shaft and carried
the thread through the fabric. The loop of thread was retained by a
hook-shaped pin to become enchained with the next loop at the reentry of
the needle. Local history reports that this device may have been used as
early as 1800, but the inventor did not patent his machine and
apparently made no attempt to commercialize it. No contemporary
references to the machine could be found, and use of the machine may
have died with the inventor in 1813.

[Illustration: Figure 7.--MADERSPERGER'S 1814 SEWING MACHINE.
Illustration from a pamphlet by the inventor entitled _Beschreibung
einer Naehmaschine_, Vienna, ca. 1816. (Smithsonian photo 49373.)]

About the same time, Josef Madersperger, a tailor in Vienna, Austria,
invented a sewing machine, which was illustrated (fig. 7) and described
in a 15-page pamphlet published about 1816.[11] On May 12, 1817, a
Vienna newspaper wrote of the Madersperger machine: "The approbation
which his machine received everywhere has induced his Royal Imperial
Majesty, in the year 1814, to give to the inventor an exclusive
privilege [patent] which has already been mentioned before in these
papers."[12] Madersperger's 1814 machine stitched straight or curving
lines. His second machine stitched small semicircles, as shown in the
illustration, and also small circles, egg-shaped figures, and angles of
various degrees. The machine, acclaimed by the art experts, must
therefore have been intended for embroidery stitching. From the
contemporary descriptions and the illustration, the machine is judged to
have made a couched stitch--one thread was laid on the surface of the
fabric and stitched in place with a short thread carried by a
two-pointed needle of the type invented by Weisenthal. Two fabrics could
have been stitched together, but not in the manner required for
tailoring. The machine must have had many deficiencies in the tension
adjustment, feed, and related mechanical operations, for despite the
published wishes for success the inventor did not put the machine into
practical operation.[13] Years later Madersperger again attempted to
invent a sewing machine using a different stitch (see p. 13).

[Illustration: Figure 8.--AN ENGRAVING OF THIMONNIER and his sewing
machine of 1830, from _Sewing Machine News_, 1880. (Smithsonian photo
10569-C.)]

A story persists that about 1818-1819 a machine that