Ainslie Knitting Machine Company Records

The Ainslie Knitting Machine Company was founded around 1900 by Selig Broadwin, a Russian immigrant. The business was first established at 281 Ainslie St. (corner of Humbolt St.) in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY, hence the name of the company. The first listing of the company appears in the Brooklyn city directory for 1907. Broadwin sold general merchandise (knitted sweaters, for instance) as well as mill supplies and sewing and knitting machines to the garment factories that were concentrated in Brooklyn and Queens at that time. He also manufactured a brusher of his own invention. A photograph included in this collection shows the shop at the corner of Humbolt about 1920 with Selig (President) and sons Leopold (Vice-President) and Sampson. It also shows an unidentified workman standing at the side of the building with a wagon of crated knitting machines being delivered to the building behind with the hoist. Sampson Broadwin had just joined the firm having graduated from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919.

According to Alan Broadwin, Sampson's son, the knitting machines sold in this period were all hand operated devices made in Europe—presumably because none were manufactured in the United States. To increase productivity without adding to space and help, factories turned to motorized knitters. Ainslie was making power attachments for these devices probably before 1919. After entering the business, Sampson Broadwin developed designs for motorizing and eventually automating the hand-operated machines the company was importing from Europe because Ainslie did not have the capital to produce a complete machine. The company manufactured and installed the motor drives on the imported machines and was eventually successful in convincing its German contacts to produce motor operated, semi-automatic, and finally automatic flat knitting machines for the American and world market. The semi-automatic knitting machines produced in the 1920s through the 1950s employed coded link chains and punched control cards.

Sometime in the 1930s, Ainslie moved to a larger, four-story loft at 740-750 Grand St. in Brooklyn, eventually aquiring adjacent buildings; the address in the 1960s is listed at 738-750 Grand St.

Ainslie also sold and modified two well-known hand-cranked home knitters: the Gearhart knitter, manufactured in Clearfield, PA. and the Auto Knitter (sometimes hyphenated) made by the Auto Knitter Hosiery Co. of Buffalo, NY. By the end of the 1930s, Ainslie seems to have taken over the production line of the Buffalo company and was improving upon the Auto Knitter well into the 1960s.

Gearhart machines and parts were supplied to Ainslie by the Clearfield Knitting Machine Co., Clearfield, PA, from 1926-1928 after Gearhart went into bankruptcy, and from then through the 1950's (and possibly later) by the Superior Appliance & Pattern Co. of Clearfield. There is one example in the collection of an instruction book for the Gearhart with Superior's name on the front cover. And a Gearhart nameplate can sometimes be found on a machine under the Ainslie name.

- The history is based largely on donor Alan Broadwin's brief history of the company (see Executive series) and Richard M. Candee's The Hand-Cranked Knitter and Sock Machine: a Social History and Catalogue of 19th and 20th Century Home Knitters of American Invention.