Everyone remembers the dedication of Vladimir Mayakovsky: "Comrade Nette, the ship and man." Similarly, for ordinary consciousness, an old sewing machine and its creator, Isaac Singer, “fused” in the name Singer. Moreover, refined vintage equipment over time pushed into the background the portrait of the owner of the production.
The highest reliability of all structural units allows even after more than a century to produce the perfect line, working with any materials - from the finest fabrics to rough skin. The owner’s interest in how to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine is far from idle .
Mr. Singer, a sewing machine and businessman
The accuracy and punctuality of the manufacturer of the equipment will help us when, armed with patience and turning to the help of a universal modern friend, the Internet, we determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine. You ask how? Very simple! “All moves are recorded,” as one well-known literary hero said. Detailed "Talmuds" with serial numbers of black beauties-seamstresses were neatly stored in the accounts department of the Singer company, and then in abbreviated form were transferred to the Web for all curious owners, collectors and hunters of antique sewing equipment.
Of all the journals in the accounting registry, only documents dated from the years 1851 (the year of the first issue of the famous typewriter) to the 1870th turned out to be inaccessible to analysts. Such a meticulous detailing of documents over the past century and a half does honor any production! Therefore, we say thank you to the talented inventor and his successors for the opportunity to satisfy the thirst for knowledge on the question: “How to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine?”
Amazing production
From the information provided, we can learn, for example, that already at the beginning of 1871 the serial number of sewing equipment coming out of the conveyor was 611,000, at the beginning of next year - 914,000, in 1973 - 964,000, and so on. As you can see, the demand for cars was not the same in different periods, and the circulations of their production changed from year to year, and were not constant.
The millionth Singer was released already in 1873, the two millionth copy dates to the end of 1875, the ten millionth was produced in 1891. The year 1899, the penultimate of the century, ended at 16,831,099.
Singer branches
In addition to solving the question: “How to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine?”, Since 1900 , thanks to the letter marking, it is possible to establish the place where this or that mechanism was made.
The letters M, P correspond to production in Scotland, N - in American New Jersey (the city of Elizabeth). Since 1904, marking B has been added to the American plant (a little more than one and a half million sewing machines were produced under it).
Of interest to us are the numbers of Russian-made equipment that appeared in 1906 in Podolsk, starting with the letter S, T (from 1908 it was replaced by the letter E, from 1911 - A). In addition to Podolsk, Singer branches existed in Prussian Wittenberg, as well as in Connecticut (the city of Bridgeport).
Obviously, for example, a 1904 Singer sewing machine can only be of foreign manufacture, most likely American. The Singer Manufacturing Company (existing since 1863) was present on the Russian market five years after the abolition of serfdom. The high cost of delivering equipment from overseas prompted thirty-five years later to establish production in Podolsk. Construction began in 1900, but initially from 1902 the factory was preparing only a few spare parts for family sewing machines.
Letter doubling
In the 20s of the XX century, mass production prompted to label products with numbers preceded by a two-letter code. Factories were built in Colombian Bogota, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Canada, Quebec, Australia, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines. The production closest to Russia was located in the German Karsruhe, the Italian city of Monza, the French Bonnieres, in Istanbul, Pakistan.
In the United States, another plant opened in South Carolina (Anderson) during this period, in addition to traditional production in New Jersey.
History of the Russian "Singer"
Until the revolution of 1917, the director of the enterprise built in Podolsk remained the engineer Walter Frank Dickson, who built it. In 1913, with which it is customary to compare all the successes of Soviet construction, the daily production of sewing machines amounted to 2,500 per day, over 600 thousand per year. The company enjoyed all the preferences of the Court Supplier of His Imperial Majesty. Its turnover increased seven times against the initial one; 3,000 company stores were opened throughout Russia, the total staff of which exceeded 20 thousand people. Products not inferior in quality to foreign products were provided to the domestic buyer by installments. That is why the Singer sewing machine is found today in almost every family.
The Podolsk plant in the first years of Soviet power produced small consumer goods - cast irons, coal-irons, openers and pans. Later, it was again transformed into the only enterprise in the Union that manufactured Podolsk sewing machines, and in 1994 returned to the bosom of Singer. Production efficiency is supported by cooperation with the transnational corporation Semi-Tech.
Myths and the true story of Singer
The problem, which is how to determine the year of manufacture of the Singer sewing machine, has not only an altruistic-historical aspect, but also a noticeable “shade of treasure hunting”. There is a myth that individual parts of the mechanism (in particular the shaft) were created by designers from rare valuable metals (palladium and the like).
Having such an enviable rarity, apparently of family value, do not trust people who are suitable for its “study” with a magnet in their hands in the expectation that non-iron materials of the sewing machine will not show attractive properties.
Metals other than iron are mainly present in the bed of a limited batch of foot sewing machines manufactured in the mid-30s. The high molybdenum content makes them somewhat more valuable scrap metal.
The tendency to sensations, which is characteristic of a society in a state of turmoil, led to the publication in the domestic press of yet another false information that some serial numbers of Singer sewing machines, lost precisely in Russia, promise their owners a prize of $ 1 million. It seems that it makes no sense to debunk such children's fables.
The truth is that in the merchant milieu of our pre-revolutionary Fatherland, the idea has ripened to produce under the same brand name a much lower quality counterfeit, the speed of which and the reliability of the nodes left much to be desired. A sign of a genuine “Singer” is an oval copper plate with the inscription “Toe Singer Manfg Co”, placed on the bed. An individual number that begins with a letter of the Latin alphabet should be searched on the blackboard.
It is worth checking the operability of your sewing machine by calling the wizard to adjust the mechanisms. Indeed, even the inventor Isaac Singer himself once once a whole day “fought” over the first, just-collected brainchild, trying to get a perfectly even line. It turned out that the engineer simply forgot to adjust the tension of the upper thread due to fatigue. Perhaps putting the rarity of your rarity into operation is also worth the most minimal effort!