Modern Cotton Spinning Machinery, Its Principles and Construction

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
ITS PRINCIPLES AND CONSTRUCTION.
ASSOCIATE INSTITUTION MECHANICAL ENGINEERS, MEMBER MANCHESTER ASSOCIATION OF ENGINEERS, ETC.
WITH TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS.
In submitting the following pages to the judgment of the public, the Author does not pretend to have written an exhaustive treatise. This would require a volume much larger than the present. It has rather been his aim to treat a branch of the subject thoroughly, which has hitherto had scant justice done to it. While the market is flooded with books detailing the rules by which speeds are calculated, and the necessary wheel changes made, those dealing with the construction of the machinery employed are few in number. This is the more singular, because England is, beyond doubt, the true mother of this department of mechanics, and to-day her textile machinists head the lists alike for excellence of production and fertility of invention.
Since the issue of the late Mr. Evan Leigh’s “Science of Modern Cotton Spinning”—comparatively a long time ago—no book has appeared which treats the subject from the machinist’s point of view. The well known book of Mr. Richard Marsden, “A Handbook of Cotton Spinning,” as its name implies, deals more with the operation than the machinery, although the latter is described in considerable detail. In the present work, while it has been impossible to avoid saying something of spinning, the enunciation of the principles on which the machinery is constructed forms its raison d’être . On the Continent, more than one ponderous treatise has been published, which possess the peculiarity of foreign technical works in the disproportionate way in which the small details are treated. While this is valuable from the professorial point of view, it is apt to be prejudicial in actual practice, because the operation of these details varies considerably at different times. The avoidance of pedantry is very essential in any book dealing with practical work, and with this in view, the Author has endeavoured, while fully considering every principle involved, to do so in a plain manner, which will be readily understood. It has rather been the aim to suggest the inferences to be drawn than to dogmatically state inflexible rules.