Sewing machine accessories, like the machines themselves, had their successes and failures.
One gadget that never quite caught on was a musical sewing machine cover, patented in 1882, that held a player-piano roll
and was run by treadle power. The treadle also activated a sewing machine fan patented in the 1870's and marketed for
a dollar. It must have constituted the greatest advance toward summer sewing comfort since the invention of lemonade.
Among the wackier devices was one that actually was used in the 19th Century England - that
is until the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals stepped in. It was a sewing machine powered by
small leashed dogs on a kind of treadmill!
Thomas Edison supposedly invented another sewing machine - though his biography discreetly
makes no mention of it- that worked on voice power; a membrane mounted level with the operator's mouth transformed sound waves
into energy. The principle itself was valid, but Edison-who was deaf-overestimated women's abiltiy to keep talking!
Imagine that! :)
Believe it or not - one pair of scissors invented in France, boasted 18 different uses!
It supposedly served, among other things, as a straight edge and ruler, a nail file, screw driver, a pen knife, a glass cutter,
a wire cutter, an ink eraser, a pattern perforator and a cigar clipper-presumably for the rare seamstress who enjoyed a cigar
while she sewed! :)
