Alex I Askaroff

Alex has spent a lifetime in the sewing industry and is considered one of the foremost experts of pioneering machines and their inventors. He has written extensively for trade magazines, radio, television, books and publications world wide. Over the last two decades Alex has been painstakingly building this website to encourage enthusiasts around around the Globe.

Barthelemy Thimonnier 1793 - 1857

By far the most famous name in the history of the sewing machine in France is Barthelemy Thimonnier. Barthelemy Thimonnier, sometimes spelt Chimonnier, is possibly responsible for the first real or practical sewing machine in the history of the world. Calm down, calm down. I only said possibly. you will have to read my full history of the invention of the sewing machine to see how Barthelemy Thimonnier fits into the whole picture.

Let us just look at the first French sewing machine and Barthélemy Thimonnier.

His Story

Barthelemy Thimonnier 1793 - 1857

The later Thimonnier sewing machine still had big flaws, no feed mechanism so the operator had to manually force the work along and an open barbed needle that continually caught up in the fabric. However even with these flaws the machine could sew faster than a human by hand alone. Picture with kind permission of the Science Museum.

Barthélemy Thimonnier was born on August 19, 1793 in L'Arbresle, Rhône.Barthélemy Thimonnier was the oldest son of seven children. He studied for a while in Lyon, before going to work as a tailor in Paris. In 1823, he settled just outside Saint-Étienne and went to work as a tailor.

Tailors worked hard and were paid poorly. As Barthélemy Thimonnier sewed away each day his inventive mind was hard at work trying to figure out how to make a machine do the low-paid work of the tailor. After years of trial-and-error he formed a machine out of wood that actually did help him to stitch fabric.

By 1829, he had invented the first French sewing machine and signed a contract with Auguste Ferrand. The patent for his machine was issued on 17 July 1830.  

The first real practical sewing machine that we know of was born. Barthélemy Thimonnier (I'm going to call him Bart now as it makes my head hurt spelling his name) took out a patent for a barbed needled to be used in his sewing machine. Smaller versions of his barbed needles are still used today in embellishing sewing machines today.

Barthélemy Thimonnier sewing machine

Barthelemy Thimonnier's, first, mainly wooden sewing machine. The thread is below the table and was caught by the barbed needle and pulled through the work. The machines were nicknamed 'arm breakers' or 'leg crackers' as they were so hard to work. Note the barbed needle laying on the base of the machine. You can see how it would snag the material as it is pulled through.

The sewing machine that Barthélemy Thimonnier made was primarily of wood with metal working parts. It actually worked, producing a  sort of simple chain stitch, or as he called it on his patent a tambour stitch, you know the sort of stitch you find across potato sacks.

In fact the sewing machines worked so well that he gained a contract to build loads of them. They were used to sew uniforms for the French army.

Before long Bart was sewing away with dozens of machines taking work from the hungry tailors of Paris. The first sewing machine factory in the world was doing well but we all know what Frenchmen are like when their blood is up. Madame Guillotine was still warm from their revolution.

On the 20 January 1831 a crowd or angry out-of-work tailors ransacked the Rue de Sèvres factory. At first they threw garlic at the machines but to their amazement they bounced off! They then decided to have a booze up and torch Bart’s workshop properly.

A crowd watched as they piled all the wooden sewing machines up outside his workshop and burnt them. They danced around the fire singing Vive La France or something like that.

Poor old Bart headed for the hills, his business in flames.

Look, I can be as rude as I like about the French as I have a lot of French blood in me and not via a blood transfusion!

Bart, unperturbed, and with that usual French resilience, started all over again with an even better model. More patents followed in 1841, 1845, and 1847. Capable of sewing 200 stitches per minute seven times faster than a tailor by hand!

A later patent managed 300 stitches per minute. By 1832, Barthélemy Thimonnier was back in Amplepuis with an improved version of his machine.

Nevertheless, those sneaky tailors knew what he was up to and set about the poor fellow again, this time with far more powerful weapons, strings of onions!

Barthélemy Thimonnier fled to England just like the many aristocrats that had feared for their lives during the French Revolution years earlier. Where was the Scarlet Pimpernel when he was needed eh!

It is unfortunate that the French, at that time, did not see the potential of the sewing machine for it made people like Isaac Singer and Elias Howe fabulously wealthy. It also saw the start of mass production and provided millions of jobs around the world. There is no doubt in my mind that had the French embraced this new technology they would have benefitted as a nation beyond any imagination.

In October 1847 Barthélemy Thimonnier and Jean-Marie Magnin patented a type of embroidery sewing machine. A faster type of Tambour stitch machine. In England he tied up with Phillip May of London and Manchester to secure his patent.

Unfortunately Barthélemy Thimonnier stuck with his old ideas of hooking and pulling threads rather than improve his type of unreliable stitch. The stitch came undone easily and had to be sealed at each end with candle wax. Also it was easy for the machine to miss stitches and once a stitch was missed the whole seam could unravel. Basically the design was flawed unlike the Willcox & Gibbs chain stitch which had overcome all the problems associated with it.

Here is a close-up of the improved stitch formation on his later patent applications. Look how simple it is but no one had managed it before. The biggest problem was that when the barbed needle went back up through the work it often snagged threads in the fabric causing the operator to deftly un-snag the fabric before pulling it along and plunging the pedal down for the next stitch.

Barthélemy Thimonnier was still going strong with his flawed machine and in 1850 he applied for American patents in the hope of securing lucrative business in the largest democracy in the world.

Now, in England he sold some of his patents to a Manchester firm and tried to exhibit at the 1851 London Exhibition but unfortunately his demonstration machine was held up and never made it. He had to be one of the unluckiest entrepreneurs/inventors that I have ever come across. By the 1850's he should have been richer than Isaac Singer and Elias Howe combined.

Bart's real problem was similar to that of Elias Howe he could not sell his machine well. A week with a double glazing or insurance salesman would have worked wonders for him. One of Bart's real problems was they way he tried to promote his machine.

"The tailor or man of work who opposes my machine is like the child that revolts against his nurse. It makes no sense to me why my inventions should be attacked."

Hummn! Me thinks he needs a little lesson in how to talk to people.

At the 1855 World Fair in Paris Barthélemy Thimonnier won the First class or Gold Medal.

However I think this was a bit of French politics trying to show the world that it was a Frenchman, one Barthélemy Thimonnier who had actually invented the first sewing machine. The machine would not have been as good as the foreign competitors from America.

Another first for the Internet, the America 1850 Barthélemy Thimonnier Patent for his Tambour Stitch machine.

 United States Patent Office
Patent 7622 September 3 1850
To all of whom it may concern:
Be it known that I, Barthélemy Thimonnier, Aine, of Amplepuis, Department of Du Rhone, in the Republic of France, a citizen of France. Have invented or discovered new and useful improvement to the sewing machine for the forming of stitches in fabrics.

As much as he tried poor old Barthélemy Thimonnier never regained his former success and although he had made the first reasonable sewing machine in the entire history of the world it did not stop the old tailor ending up with very little.

Just two years after his success at the Paris show he died in poverty never gaining from his amazing invention.

Barthélemy Thimonnier died on 5 July or August 1857 at the good age (for the time he was 64) back in Amplepuis. His son, E Thimonnier kept a working model for over 30 years as a memento of his fathers efforts.  

One final note is that there is still a company called Thimonnier who sell bag closing equipment today.

Barthélemy Thimonnier would have been very proud of the fact that his name will be immortalised for being one of the first people in the history of the world to invent a working and very usable sewing machine.

Gnome et Rhone

Alex's latest Book: Tales from the Coast

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