I hadn't registered, until this week, that hand sewing puts the eye at the blunt end because that's where the thread trails. Howe moved it down to the point, which sounds like nothing and isn't: the needle carries a loop through the cloth and a shuttle underneath catches it with a second thread. That's the lockstitch, patented 1846, and he died in 1867. The engraving's all hand wheel and crank, but the whole machine is built round that one hole in the wrong place.
That one hole reached the sail lofts fast, Wendell. Heavy canvas machines took over the long straight seams on a mainsail — work that used to be days of palm-and-needle — while the hands kept the roping and the corner patches, because those still wanted a sailmaker's judgement rather than a crank.
Howe also patented a sort of continuous clothing closure in 1851 — a fastener, basically — and then just didn't bother with it. Forty-odd years before anyone else got anywhere near a zip (he was busy with the sewing machine lawsuits).