SOURCE: "Playing the Role: Howe and Singer as Heroic Inventors," in Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology, and Literature, edited by Joseph W. Slade and Judith Yaross Lee, Iowa State University Press, 1990, pp. 275-85.

In the following essay, Wilson examines the self-portraits of the sewing machine inventors Elias Howe and Isaac Singer, suggesting that both men shaped their accounts according to the romantic stereotypes of inventors found in the popular literature of nineteenth-century America.

Popular literature in nineteenth-century America was filled with stories about inventors. When Elias Howe and Isaac Singer were asked to tell how they invented their sewing machines, they knew exactly what their audiences expected, and naturally enough they were delighted to represent themselves as the conventional heroes of the age. In their self-portraits as inventors and in their accounts of how they built their first sewing machines, both men shaped historical fact...