Speaking of the invention of a practical, affordable sewing machine:
It was a democratizing influence. James Parton was exaggerating only a little when he wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1867 that it was “one of the means by which the industrious laborer is as well clad as any millionaire.” (p. 84)
Evans, Harold. They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2004.