Isaac Merrit Singer ran away from his Owego, New York, home in 1825, when he was only 12 years old. He joined a band of traveling players and remained an actor until he was 24. Then he decided to "get a real job." He worked at a machine shop, but continued as an actor part time.

In 1850, Singer headed to Boston with a device he had created to carve wood-block type. It never caught on. But while he was in Boston, Singer became interested in another device-the sewing machine. Such machines were rare, and those that did exist were large and unreliable. He borrowed $40 from a friend and started working on his own version of the machine.

In 1851, Singer received a patent for the device. It attracted the attention not only of tailors, but also of Elias Howe, often credited as the inventor of the sewing machine. Howe had patented his machine in 1846. He sued Singer, but they soon settled. Under their agreement, Singer and Howe pooled their patents and each received five dollars from every sewing machine sold. Singer was not sentimental about his machine. "I don't care a damn for the invention. The dimes are what I'm after," he once said. Singer's business partner, a man named Edward Clark, was responsible for another innovation--the installment payment plan. This payment option made sewing machines affordable for the first time in many homes.

In 1863, Isaac Singer was surrounded by scandal. The public learned that he had fathered 24 children by at least 5 different women. Clark was so shocked by the revelation that he ended his partnership with Singer. Isaac Singer had too much money to be worried. He moved to England, where the scandal did not reach him. He lived there until his death in 1875. The scandal had little effect on sewing machine sales, however. Mahatma Gandhi is said to have called the Singer sewing machine "one of the few useful things ever invented." Adm. Richard Byrd found them so useful that he carted six of them all the way to the Antarctic.

At its peak, Singer was producing 3 million sewing machines a year. In the mid-1970's, however, the number of people in America who sewed, or even repaired, their own clothes dropped sharply. The modern Singer company stopped selling sewing machines in 1986. Today it sells aerospace electronics.