Originally Posted by Prism99

Very old vintage machines could do only straight stitch forward. I think all machines after that have had a "reverse" option that allows you to change direction. As far as I know, reverse works on all stitches; however, the walking foot on some machines do not handle stitching in reverse so you need to be careful about that.

I'm not quite sure how you would use reverse stitching on a New York beauty. It's difficult to see where you are going when stitching in reverse.