Choose a language

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.

DraftAn editor has not reviewed this page yet.

The dream

Retold in our own words from the sources below, not quoted.

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.

Where the story comes from

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.

How it has been read

History

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.

Questions for your own dreams

  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?

Symbols in this dream

Had a dream that stayed with you?

Tell us your dream

Sources

Every reading on this page comes from these works. Page references have not all been checked yet; those still waiting are marked.

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

    public domain

    • Cited at: p. 160 (reference not yet checked)

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