On this day in 1854, the battle ended over who owned the patent for the first sewing machine. A federal commission ruled that the patent held by Elias Howe of Cambridge was valid and ordered all other sewing machine makers to pay him royalties. The tide had turned in the long "sewing machine war," and in the fortunes of Elias Howe. As the sales of sewing machines exploded, he went from poverty to wealth. Ironically, however, it is Isaac Singer, one of the men on the losing side of the case, who is most closely associated with the invention of the sewing machine. It was Singer, working in a Boston shop, who made improvements to Howe's design that resulted in a commercially viable machine. In the summer of 1846 Elias Howe packed up a model of his new invention and traveled from Cambridge to Washington, D.C. On September 10^th, he was granted a patent for the first two-thread lock-stitch sewing machine.