MADERSPERGER, Josef

As the son of a master tailor, M. soon learnt the tailors profession. After a few years working as tailors assistant he moved to Vienna in 1790 where he took a civil oath in 1799 and in 1806 married a hat manufacturer Katharina Hahn, who resided in the village of Gießn. All his life M. dealt with the construction of a fully functioning sewing machine. In 1807/08 he finished the first model with the bifilar needle with one eye in the middle, which is not preserved. The privilege granted on 10 February 1815 expired after three years for being unable to pay the necessary fees. Motivated by the privilege M. between 1817 and 1820 constructed three new models, which are known to us from the newspaper pictures and drawings. After that the news dried up for almost two decades, and M. was concerned primarily with making profitable straw hats.
At the first industrial exhibition in Vienna in 1835, M. presented himself to the public once again, this time with the machine-sewn products. From the sewing machine built in 1835 only the so-called „sewing hand“, which is displayed in the technical museum, was preserved. The entire structure was taken from a printed description of the 1841 sewing machine. The textiles in this machine did not move against the sewing head, but were located in the slider of almost two meters long frame. Bifilar needle of the sewing hand pierced the textiles from below. According to today's definition it is a machine that imitates the weaving process which uses the chain stitch. M. donated the prototype to the Polytechnic institute in Vienna. In 1841 he received a bronze medal from the Lower Austria Trade Association, but died nine years later, completely bankrupt in Vienna alms-house. Today his plan to further develop the hand-sewing machine from 1843 is known. Weak support, lack of market and technical problems, among other things contributed to the fact that he failed. In 1846 Elias Howe patented the sewing machine in the USA, which was manufactured by Issac Merrit Singer and others in large quantities in 1850s.