[2] At twelve, he ran away from home to join a traveling stage act, called the Rochester Players, after finding bits of work as a joiner and lathe operator.

At 38, with Mary Ann and eight children, he packed up his family and moved back to New York City, hoping to market his wood-block cutting machine.

In 1856, manufacturers Grover & Baker, Singer, Wheeler & Wilson, all accusing each other of patent infringement, met in Albany, New York to pursue their suits.

Orlando B. Potter, a lawyer and president of the Grover and Baker Company, proposed that, rather than squander their profits on litigation, they pool their patents.

[10] They agreed to form the Sewing Machine Combination, but for this to be of any use, they had to secure the cooperation of Elias Howe, who still held certain vital uncontested patents.

[12] Singer invested heavily in mass production utilizing the concept of interchangeable parts developed by Samuel Colt and Eli Whitney for their firearms.

Eventually, the price came down to $10(about $404.23 in 2024 USD) According to PBS, "His partner, Edward Cabot Clark, pioneered installment purchasing plans and accepted trade-ins, causing sales to soar.

"[9] Women were able to make items at home for their families or for sale and charitable groups began to support poorer women to find useful skills and respectable employment in sewing, such as the Ladies Work Society (1875), the Association for the Sale of Works of Ladies of Limited Means, the Co-operative Needlewoman's Society and associated magazines, pattern books and group classes began for the better off women who also wanted to have some form of useful, economic activity, which a sewing machine at home now offered.

[2] I. M. Singer expanded into the European market, first starting in Bonnybridge, Stirlingshire, next to the iron foundries that supplied the castings for the chassis until expansion was hindered by the expansion of the foundries around them and they then moved to Clydebank, establishing the world's largest sewing machine factory, built between 1882 and 1885, by George McKenzie in Kilbowie, Clydebank, near Glasgow,[1] consisting of two main manufacturing buildings on three levels (one building for making the domestic machines, the other for industrial model production), with a 200 ft (over 60meters) high tower with the 'Singer' name logo and four clock faces which was the largest four-sided clock tower at the time.

[citation needed] Later as the Singer Manufacturing Company and its competitors expanded, due to its affordability (or purchase plan terms) by the 1940s there were 24,000 sewing classes a year running in the UK alone, and the Education Act 1944 made practical dressmaking a compulsory subject for girls in all state schools.

[2] By the 1950s, there were Singer Teen-Age Sewing Classes and advertising campaigns to encourage girls to make their own fashions to attract boys' interest.

[2] He commissioned the 110-roomed Oldway Mansion as his private residence, with a hall of mirrors, maze and grotto garden;[2] it was rebuilt by Paris Singer, his third son from Isabella, in the style of the Palace of Versailles.

In 1911, most of the mainly female workforce at the Clydebank Singer factory went on strike in support of 12 workers who had objected to increased workload and lower pay conditions imposed (by this time there were 11,500 employees).

[2] Together, Mary Ann and Isaac had ten children, two of whom died at birth, including:[18] Financial success allowed Singer to buy a mansion on Fifth Avenue, into which he moved his second family.

[18] Isaac, meanwhile, had renewed acquaintance with Isabella Eugenie Boyer, a nineteen year old Frenchwoman, whom he had lived with in Paris when he was staying there in 1860.

[2] Together, they had six children:[2] Isaac Singer died in 1875, shortly after the wedding of his daughter by Mary Eastwood Walters, Alice, whose dress had cost as much as a London apartment.

[2] His funeral was an elaborate affair with eighty horse-drawn carriages, and around 2,000 mourners, to see him buried locally in Torquay Cemetery, at his request in three layers of coffin (cedar lined with satin, lead, English oak with silver decoration) and a marble tomb.