Clark, Edward (1811–1882)

US lawyer and entrepreneur. Sewing machine inventor Isaac Merritt Singer employed him to defend a patent infringement suit brought by Elias Howe in 1854. Clark became a partner in the Singer Company and established the principle of installment buying which the Singer Company pioneered, making it easier to purchase the expensive sewing machines.

He was born in Athens, New York. He began practising law in 1833, and moved his practice to New York City in 1836 to form Jordan and Clark with his father-in-law, the state's attorney general. He organized the first American patent pool, the Singer Machine Combination, which licensed 24 companies before expiring in 1877. Clark took over as president of the Singer company in 1875 when Singer died. By 1882, the company had manufacturing plants in Glasgow (Scotland), Montréal (Canada), and Elisabethtown, New Jersey.