It incorporated the basic eye-pointed needle and lock stitch, developed by Elias Howe, who won a patent-infringement suit against Singer in 1854.

[2] Singer consolidated enough patents in the field to enable him to engage in mass production, and by 1860 his company was the largest manufacturer of sewing machines in the world.

The Singer company began to market its machines internationally in 1855 and won first prize at the Paris World's Fair that year.

[5] In 1867, the Singer Company decided that the demand for their sewing machines in the United Kingdom was sufficiently high to open a local factory in Glasgow on John Street.

The Vice President of Singer, George Ross McKenzie selected Glasgow because of its iron making industries, cheap labour, and shipping capabilities.

[6] Demand for sewing machines outstripped production at the new plant and by 1873, a new larger factory was completed on James Street, Bridgeton.

In 1882, McKenzie, by then President-elect of the Singer Manufacturing Company, undertook the ground breaking ceremony on 46 acres (19 ha) of farmland at Kilbowie, Clydebank.

A railway station with the company name was established in 1907 with connections to adjoining towns and central Glasgow to assist in transporting the workforce to the facility.

At the height of its productiveness in the mid-1960s, Singer employed over 16,000 workers but by the end of that decade, compulsory redundancies were taking place and 10 years later the workforce was down to 5,000.

[18] Marketing strategies included focusing on the manufacturing industry,[19] gender identity,[20] credit plans,[20] and "hire purchases.

"[18] Singer's marketing emphasized the role of women and their relationship to the home, evoking ideals of virtue, modesty, and diligence.

[19] During World War II, the company suspended sewing machine production to take on government contracts for weapons manufacturing.

[21] In 1939, the company was given a production study by the government to draw plans and develop standard raw material sizes for building M1911A1 pistols.

The educational order was a programme set up by the Ordnance Board in the U.S. to teach companies without gun-making experience to manufacture weapons.

[22] The pistol tooling and manufacturing machines were transferred to Remington Rand whilst some went to the Ithaca Gun Company.

[22] In December 1940, Singer won a contract to produce the M5 Antiaircraft Director, a version of the UK-designed Kerrison Predictor.

The company celebrated the opening of its 400th retail store in 2014 and made history in 2015 when Singer Finance launched Sri Lanka's first VISA credit cards issued by a non-banking financial institution.

Subsequent milestones included changing the financial year in 2018, relocating the head office to Colombo in 2019, and relaunching its website and introducing the Singer Care App in 2020.

In 2022, Singer redefined its brand proposition and visual identity, reaffirming its position as a leader in innovation and customer engagement.

Currently Singer is the market leader in Sri Lanka’s consumer durables industry, with an unmatched reach of over 5.7 million customers and a penetration of nearly 30% of the country’s population.

This unit produced nuclear power plant control room simulators in Silver Spring, Maryland: Tech Road building for Boiling Water Reactor (BWR), Parkway building for Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) and later moved to Broken Land Parkway in Columbia, Maryland while flight simulators were produced in Binghamton, New York.

By 1971 Singer was also producing portable/home audio/visual equipment as evidenced by the Singer-branded record and cassette tape players and film-strip viewers that can be found on e.g., eBay.

For several years in the 1970s, Singer set up a national sales force for CAT phototypesetting machines (of UNIX troff fame) made by another Massachusetts company, Graphic Systems Inc.[31] This division was purchased by Wang Laboratories in 1978.

In 1987, corporate raider Paul Bilzerian made a "greenmail" run at Singer, and ended up owning the company when no "White Knight" rescuer appeared.

The four Link divisions developing and supporting industrial and flight simulation were sold to Canadian Avionics Electronics (CAE) and became CAE-Link.

The famous Singer House, designed by architect Pavel Suzor, was built in 1902–1904 at Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg as headquarters of the Russian branch of the company.

This modern style building (situated just opposite the Kazan Cathedral) is officially recognised as an object of Russian historical-cultural heritage.