So I feel it’s pretty easy to find out how they work, but I’m baffled by how it still works. And even more so, has there been any major breakthroughs since it’s original design?
Why is Singer still the best?(or is it)
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What is sewing? How does a human sew?
There are several different kinds of stitches, but fundamentally all sewing involves a single thread attached to a single needle, which you pass back and forth between different sides of a large, flat piece of cloth. This passing back-and-forth motion is very difficult for a machine to do (though it should be noted that a similar motion is integral in power looms, the early fruit of the Industrial Revolution).
So the sewing machine of Howe (of which the Singer design is a minor variation) uses *two* threads. Each thread lies on a different side of the piece of cloth. One thread is looped through a needle, which pokes down into the cloth and then back up. As it does this, it leaves a little loop of thread on the other side of the cloth.
Meanwhile, another piece of machinery (called the *bobbin*) puts a second piece of thread through that loop.
The process is actually slightly more complicated, and it down in such a way that there’s a knot at every meeting instead of just a long free-running thread constrained by a channel made of a series of loops.
>And even more so, has there been any major breakthroughs since it’s original design?
Honestly? Not really. Sewing machines are often electric instead of foot-powered these days, and sometimes the cloth is moved by an automated system instead of a woman holding it, but the central stitching mechanism is almost the exact same.
>Why is Singer still the best?(or is it)
I can’t speak to quality of different sewing machines, but I can say that almost all sewing machines on the market continue to use the Singer patented method to work.
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