Inventor, born in Spencer, Massachusetts, USA. As a boy, he tinkered with the machinery in his father's sawmill, and in 1835 went to work as an apprentice in a Lowell, MA cotton mill. He later built and patented the world's first sewing machine (1846), but no US manufacturer was interested. With some success he attempted to introduce his machine to the English market, and on returning to the USA (1847) he found his patent had been infringed. After a five-year court fight his patent rights were restored (1854), and he subsequently earned a fortune from his invention, sometimes as much as $4000 a week. During the Civil War he served as a private in a New England regiment that he recruited and equipped.
He was an American sewing machine pioneer. Contrary to popular belief, he did not invent the sewing machine (that honor was reserved for Walter Hunt), but on September 10, 1846, Howe was awarded the first United States patent for a sewing machine using a lock stitch design. So technically Howe was a refiner of the sewing machine.
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