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The small private sewing machine museum in London keeps a Thimonnier machine with instructions. The machine was sent in 1854 to the Herbin company in Troyes. Taken to Argentina in 1891, it remained there until the 1980s, when an English collector bought it. Usually, instruction booklets are lost. But from the 1870s onwards, Thimonnier became a myth, one of those unfortunate inventors that historiography is so fond of. By closely analyzing these few sheets reproduced thanks to lithography and annotated with ink, it is rather a whole culture made up of stories and technical drawings that emerges, at the very moment when it was structured and when the sewing machine became a success. This manual highlights the uses of machines and points to the ongoing shift from a technical world where breakdowns, wear-and-tear and a do-it-yourself ethos were the norm, towards a world where machines became a combination of standardised parts.