US161019A - Improvement in methods of manufacturing corsets - Google Patents

Description

HARRIET a. EMERY.

a Method of Manufacturing Corsets.

N0 lfil ol'g V v Patented March 23,1875.

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HARRIET Gr. EMERY, OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

IMPROVEMENT IN METHODS OF MANUFACTURING CORSETS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 161,019, dated March 23, 1875; application filed October 27, 1874.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, HARRIET G. EMERY, of Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, have invented an Improved Method and Means for Obtaining Measurements in the Manufacture of Childrens and Womens Under-Jackets or Corsets; and I do hereby declare that the following, taken in connection with the drawings which accompany and form part of this specification, is a description of my invention sufficorsets by furnishing a definite system of measurements and means for obtaining the same, by'which chance cutting and the loss consequent thereon maybe avoided, but also to furnish to merchants and consumers regular gradations of sizes adapted in the breadth at the shoulders and in the size of the waist (and consequently at the intermediate points) to any age and size of person, the main things required to be ascertained from the purchaser being the number of inches around the shoulders, and also the number of inches around the waist in order that the merchant may take from his shelves the garment of a size and shape to fit the person. The anatomical law upon which this system is based is that the Waist and abdomen of a female child develop very early to a size nearly, if not quite, equal to that of mature years, while the breadth across the shoulders does not develop so early or rapidly, but on the contrary goes on steadily increasing until reaching its greatest breadth. This law, as regards the waist, is sometimes in terfered with by tight lacing and other causes,

so that occasionally adult women have waists smallerithan when they were children, but the proper growth at the shoulders is not so checked. By long observation and experience I have found that for a child having a measure about twenty-two or twenty-four inches; a waist of twenty-two inches will be found, according to the age or build of the child, to accompany shoulders of twenty-two, twen ty-four, twenty-six, twenty-eight, thirty, and thirty-two inches, thus aftbrding six stand ard measurements across the shoulders of the garment for a single standard measurement for the waist. For a twenty-four-inch waist there are about five sizes of shoulders, ranging from twenty-four to thirty-two inches; for a twenty-siX-inch waist, four sizes, ran gin g from twenty-eight to thirty-four inches; and for a twenty-eight-inch waist, three sizes of shoulders, ranging from thirty to thirty-four inches; and it is found sufficient for all practical purposes of a good and easy fit to allow two, or about two, inches difference in the successive sizes, whether of the waist or of the shoulders.

Heretofore manufacturers have almost despaired of any possibility of establishing a trade in such articles, and families have been compelled to make such garments as best they could, and with every possible variety of indilferent success, and often producing articles most irksome to the wearer. To supply the market, therefore, with every grade and size of these garments adapted to every age, and constructed on scientific principles of measurement and in proper relative proportions in their different parts, so that they may be procured as readily, and with the same assurance of getting afit, as a glove, and also to open up a field for manufacturing enterprise heretofore but little worked, is the object of my invention.

Only two measurements need be furnished by the purchaser in order to be supplied with the ready-made article complete and adapted for immediate use on the person.

The above-described method of obtaining measurements is not confined to childrens bodies or corsets, but is also equally adapted to womens corsets, as per the following scale:

For a waist of eighteen inches I make the shoulders of thirty-four or thirty-six inches; for a waist of twenty inches, thirty-four, thirty-siX, thirty-eight, and forty inches; for a waist of twenty-two inches, thirty-six, thirtyeight, and forty inches; for awaist of twentyfour inches, thirty-six, thirty-eight, forty, and forty-two inches; for a waist of twenty-six inches, thirty-eight, forty, forty-two, and forty-four inches; for at waist of twenty-eight inches, forty, forty-two, forty-four, forty-six, and forty-eight inches; for a waist of thirty inches, forty-two, forty-four, forty-six, and forty-eight inches.

By my new plan of a graduated series of shoulder measurements, in connection with a given and constant measurement for the waist, based upon the laws of growth of the person, I am enabled to provide an entire series of shoulder measurements adapted to any given waist size, varying from the narrowest shoulders to the broadest, and scaled or graduated to meet the changes in the shapes of growing children, and the different developments in the shoulders and busts of ladies of the same size around the waist, and this without the need of any special appliances in the corset itself for tightening up or letting out or filling up, so as to make it fit across the shoulders, such, for instance, as lacings, cotton springs, aircushions, rubber bands around the shoulders, different rows of fastenings, strings or cords in pockets around the shoulders, 850., for some such adjuncts or appliances must be used with ordinary corsets cut (as they are expressly) to be enlarged or contracted at pleasure, in order to adapt them to the wearer.

By my shoulder measurements, graduated relatively to a given waist measurement, none of these expensive and troublesome devices are required to vary the shoulder measurement; the corset is adapted and ready for use and a proper fit at once; it is simple and not liable to get out of order, and does not require constant adjustment; and in the old mode of measuring and making corsets such means of adjustment were necessary, because a corset with a given waist and a given size of shoulder or bust will fit comparatively few people; but, with a given waist and by varyin g the size of the corset about the shoulders, the corsets with the same waist may be adapted to very many different people of widely different forms in other respects.

Heretofore, in the old practice in the manufacture of childrens corsets, there has been but one measurement-viz., that around the waistand in ever case where they have had shoulder-support there has been but one size of shoulder to any given waist size.

By my improvement of the two measurements, one fixed or determined, and the other having a gradual increment, a complete outfit, covering all the changes in the growing shape from childhood to womanhood can be obtained.

Any number of shoulder sizes may be made for a given waist size, and the increments or graduations of the former may be by even or odd numbers of inches, or by fractions of inches.

Growing out of the discovery of the anatomical law which has prompted this new system of measuring, I facilitate and economize the manufacture of my corsets, because I have certain fixed and absolute standards whereby to cut the material, using for this purpose sets of pattern-guides to out from, preferably brassbound, each being of the shape adapted for the two measurements above named, as well as in the other outlines, to the corset desired.

Once made, these patterns (of course enough larger than the sewed piece of material to allow for cording, binding, hemming, &c.,) are permanently available, and need no change or variations for particular persons, or for changing fashions, for they are prepared in accord with the human form in all its varied sizes. This fact alone forcibly illustrates the great value and economy and simplicity of my new plan of measurement and cutting, and it at once permits the abandonment of the present inconvenient and costly practices of either measuring the individual in order to make a special corset to fit her, or of so .making them that they must afterward be changed in form, and tightened or loosened to adapt them to the person, with the risk of distorting one part in the attempt to bring to the shape another part.

I claim- In the manufacture of corsets, the method above described of cutting variable measurements for the shoulders relatively to a given measurement for the waist, by means of the described series of cutting-out patterns, having a given waist measurement and graduated or varying shoulder measurements, substantially as set forth.

HARRIET G. EMERY.

Witnesses:

JOHN J. HALSTED, GEO. T. SMALLWOOD.

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