ArchaicArcane

No, Several other people made large steps toward it before he did, and Elias Howe has the distinction of inventing the Lockstitch sewing machine, if memory serves. What Singer excelled at, and what they continue to trade on to this day, is "marketing". They were pretty much the first "retail financing" as best I could tell. You could make payments on a machine, which made them affordable which is what got them more than 90% market share at the turn of the last century... innovation wasn't strictly their forte. For an uninformed person like me, their production line was impressive too. I wonder if I can get the Scottish archives to let me show parts of that video for the presentation...

Hah! There was one of those on the board recently too. Do you remember whose (who's?) machine it was?

I have a few examples of machines for sure. I will definitely make note to mention that I've never actually ended up with a vintage parts machine. (if I qualify that in this case I mean mid-1960s-ish or older.) Cabinets I don't have a huge amount of experience with, I can't even tell you which cabinets I have here.

This is the Winselmann Handcrank:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]463809[/ATTACH]
My cousin has it now, but has said I can borrow it for the trip.

No idea, for that matter, -when- did that start? The ladies want a talk on vintage sewing machines, I can't think of a lot of machines that even have 1/4" markings on the plates prior to about mid-1950? When scant came about?