Dating Sewing machines


I read this online: 
"New Home has records showing manufacturing dates up to 1955. If you have a machine manufactured by New Home or Free Westinghouse and want to know the year of manufacture send the serial number to the New Home Sewing Machine Co, P.O Box 25901, Los Angeles, California.

Has anyone ever done this? Or 1800 631 0183 is the phone number on the ISMACS website: http://www.ismacs.net/newhome/home.html it is Janome now, I found out when I called but they were closed for the day. Janome seems to own; Free Westinghouse, New Home, Elna, Necchi! Crazy how there were so many manufactures and now there are just a few that bought them all out!


The machine I am trying to date

So not to be put off by a little thing like time difference I went to the Janome website http://content.janome.com/index.cfm/ContactUs/General_Inquiries and filled in the 'contact us' link. I put N/A for the required fields of Dealer and Software, then I chose a random purchase date to get past that required field, I got a Prompt reply this morning:

"We will need the place of manufacture of the machine in order to date a New Home treadle sewing machine. This information should be on or under the needle plate area."

Of course it isn't written on or under my machines needle plate, but the decals mention Rockford Illinois:


 So I have emailed them back but am not holding out too much hope that they can help, however it is good to know these Free/Westinghouse, Necchi, Elna and New Home machines can potentially be dated by Janome if you can supply them with the necessary details.

My machine's serial number isn't in the Rockford Illinois listings, so although that is where the company was based that is not where my machine was actually made, so Janome cannot help me unless I can find some indication on the machine of where it was made. Oh well, hubby can help me search but I don't like our chances and I don't want to know enough to pull the thing apart on the off chance it is written in it somewhere!!