On July 9, 1819, Elias Howe, inventor of the first practical sewing machine, was born in Spencer, Massachusetts.
At the age of 16, he began an apprenticeship in a factory in Lowell, Massachusetts, but lost that job in the Panic of 1837. Howe then moved to Boston, where he found work in a machinist’s shop. It was here that he began tinkering with the idea of inventing a mechanical sewing machine.
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