Hi, Fashion historian and textile conservator here. I'm not sure the analogy works because sewing patterns existed long before sewing machines were invented. The sewing machine didn't manifest home sewing, instead it facilitated it. Sewing patterns absolutely came first, maybe not mass produced the way Butterick did, but they were distributed and shared and of course made at home. As you know, historians have long considered Jacquard looms to be an early computer, with the accompanying punch cards serving as proto-software. Punch cards did not exist until after the jacquard loom was invented, which to me makes them much more like software than sewing patterns.
Thanks so much for this and this is a great point! Perhaps the advent of the sewing machine is more about democratization then? (and of course, I guess one could note that people were doing calculations before personal computers, but I think this is a big difference in scale!) This is all fascinating. Thanks.
Hi, Fashion historian and textile conservator here. I'm not sure the analogy works because sewing patterns existed long before sewing machines were invented. The sewing machine didn't manifest home sewing, instead it facilitated it. Sewing patterns absolutely came first, maybe not mass produced the way Butterick did, but they were distributed and shared and of course made at home. As you know, historians have long considered Jacquard looms to be an early computer, with the accompanying punch cards serving as proto-software. Punch cards did not exist until after the jacquard loom was invented, which to me makes them much more like software than sewing patterns.
Thanks so much for this and this is a great point! Perhaps the advent of the sewing machine is more about democratization then? (and of course, I guess one could note that people were doing calculations before personal computers, but I think this is a big difference in scale!) This is all fascinating. Thanks.
sewing machine : personal computer as Jacquard loom : mainframe ?