MIT Press: The Bra-and-Girdle Maker That Fashioned the Impossible for NASA

"...Key to these demands were NASA’s painstaking engineering standards, which pushed the very limits of the equipment and seamstresses’ own techniques. The tolerances allowed — less than a 64th of an inch in only one direction from the seam — meant that yard after yard of fabric was sewn to an accuracy smaller than the sewing needle’s eye. To achieve such precision, many women used a modified treadle that, instead of starting and stopping a Singer sewing machine’s operation, fired one stitch per footfall through the multiple layers of a suit’s surface. ..."

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