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Elias HoweSaid to be around 1845; first printed 1900

Elias Howe's spear dream: a legend

A famous story says the sewing machine needle came from a nightmare about spears. Howe himself never seems to have told it.

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Der Traum

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In the story, the inventor Elias Howe was struggling to make a machine sew, because an ordinary needle has its eye at the blunt end. He dreamed that a king in a strange land ordered him to finish a sewing machine within twenty-four hours or be put to death.

Surrounded by the king's warriors, he noticed that their spears had holes near the tips. He woke, realised the needle's eye belonged near the point, and his machine was born.

Woher die Geschichte stammt

Howe patented his lockstitch sewing machine in 1846 and later earned a fortune from royalties. The dream story first appears in print in 1900, in a family history of his mother's relatives, more than thirty years after his death in 1867.

Later retellings added vivid details, such as cannibals and a cooking pot, that are not in the 1900 version.

Wie der Traum gedeutet wurde

Geschichte

The story is a family tradition published long after the fact. It also flatters its hero more than the history does: needles with the eye near the point had already been used in earlier sewing machines, and Howe's patent relied on the combination of that needle with a shuttle and a feed mechanism.

Fragen zu deinen eigenen Träumen

  1. Have you ever had a deadline nightmare, with everything depending on finishing in time?
  2. Which family stories about your relatives have grown in the retelling?
  3. What small detail in a stressful dream might be worth a second look?

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Quellen

Jede Deutung auf dieser Seite stammt aus diesen Werken. Noch sind nicht alle Seitenangaben geprüft. Ausstehende Prüfungen sind gekennzeichnet.

  1. Thomas Waln-Morgan Draper (1900). The Bemis History and Genealogy. San Francisco: The Stanley-Taylor Co..

    gemeinfrei

    • Fundstelle: p. 160 (Fundstelle noch nicht geprüft)

    A family history of Elias Howe's mother's family; the dream story appears on p. 160.