There are many modifications of the throstle system besides the one above described; the most celebrated of which are Danforth’s, called the American throstle, Montgomery’s, and Gore’s. I must refer for an account of them to my work entitled “The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain,” where they are minutely described and illustrated with accurate figures.
Mule-spinning.—The general principles of the mule have been already stated. This machine is so named because it is the offspring, so to speak, of two older machines, the jenny and the water-frame. A mule is mounted with from 240 to 1000 spindles, and spins of course as many threads.
[Fig. 346.] represents the original jenny of Hargreaves, by which one person was enabled to spin from 16 to 40 threads at once. The soft cords of rovings wound in double conical cops upon skewers were placed in the inclined frame at C; the spindles for first twisting and then winding-on the spun yarn were set upright in steps and bushes at A, being furnished near their lower ends with whorls, and endless cords, which were driven by passing round the long-revolving drum of tin plate E. D is the clasp or clove, having a handle for lifting its upper jaw a little way, in order to allow a few inches of the soft roving to be introduced. The compound clove D being now pushed forward upon its friction wheels to A, was next gradually drawn backward, while the spindles were made to revolve with proper speed by the right hand of the operative turning the flywheel B. Whenever one stretch was thereby spun, the clove frame was slid home towards A; the spindles being simultaneously whirled slowly to take up the yarn, which was laid on in a conical cop by the due depression of the faller wire at A with the spinner’s left hand.
[Fig. 347.] is a diagram of Arkwright’s original water-frame spinning machine, called afterwards the water-twist frame. The rovings mounted upon bobbins in the creel A A, have their ends led through between the three sets of twin rollers below B B, thence down through the eyelet hooks upon the end of the flyers of the spindles C, and finally attached to their bobbins. The spindles being driven by the band D D upon their lower part, continuously twist and wind the finished yarn upon the bobbins; constituting the first unremitting automatic machine for spinning which the world ever saw.
