Originally Posted by
miriam
I remember having to cram myself into a girdle back in the 60s....
I guess you can blame the girdle partly on one of our little town’s most famous residents.
N.O. Brantly developed a knitting machine to produce elastic in 1931. A decade later he revolutionized the girdle industry with a more sophisticated loom that turned out two-way-stretch elastic. Soon after that, 85 percent of the world's girdles were being made by Brantly machines.
He moved here in 1955, and some of his other inventions included a Sports Bra for well-endowed women (Cameo), a personal helicopter (now owned by Leer Jet), backhoe attachments for small tractors, and an oil pump jack for the energy industry.
To bring this back around to vintage sewing machines, I was at the 2006 liquidation auction of his last lingerie factory (FryBrant Inc) here, and bought a couple of old H-frame butcher-block industrial power stands that were part of the equipment....
CD in Oklahoma