A stitch in time...

Failing the sewing needle, an ancient generic invention, the sewing machine is my hope for stardom.

There's nothing I like better than walking around my house, ahem, wild and free; but without the sewing machine, patented by Elias Howe (after a legal battle with Isaac Singer, and a brush with the unlucky John Fisher), it would not be a preference, but a curse, some of the time at least.

Also, there would be no 'specialist clothing.' No "clean rooms" to make computer chips and satellites. Unless Granny's knitting is vacuum-proof there would be no spacesuits, so no astronauts to launch them anyway. And if you did send them up, there'd be no parachute to get them back. We're useless without our clothes, cold, weak, vulnerable. Seems with them, we can do quite a bit.

Submitted by: Thomas McNicholas