The production and refinement of textiles has a very old tradition worldwide.
Especially the Austrian Embroidery Business which is entirely located in the
region of Vorarlberg, has a history going back until the 18th century. In
the
middle of the 19th century the first manual machines were established, about
50 years later, they were replaced by the first shuttle machines which were
actuated electrically.
The antecessor of the shuttle embroidery machine was the shuttle embroidery
automat which was developed and built by U. Gröbli in St. Gallen, Switzerland
in
1863. Similar to a sewing machine, the stitch is formed by two threads.
Arranged in precisely defined intervals, the needles stab through the fabric
and
form stitches with the thread from the shuttles. A manual pantograph controlled
the machine and was responsible for the design. Later, the manual pantograph
was replaced by the automatic punchcard controller, today embroidery machines
are controlled by specialized computer software.