In recent years smokeless powders have largely superseded all others. These contain usually nitro-cellulose (gun cotton), or nitro-glycerine, or both, made up into a plastic, coherent, and homogeneous compound of a gluey nature, and fashioned into horn-like sticks or rods by being forced under pressure through a die plate having small holes, through which the plastic material is strained into strings like macaroni, or else is molded into tablets, pellets, or grains of cubical shape. Prominent among those who have contributed to this art are the names of Turpin, Abel and Dewar, Nobel, Maxim, Munroe, Du Pont, Bernadou and others.
In the recent years of the Nineteenth Century great activity has been manifest in this field of invention. In the United States more than 600 different patents have been granted for explosives, the larger portion of them being for nitro-compounds, which partake in a greater or less degree of the qualities of gun cotton or nitro-glycerine. The influence exerted by them has been incalculable. Subtile as is the force imprisoned in inter-atomic relation, it has been the power behind the boom of the cannon; it has lent itself to the driving of great tunnels through the solid rock; it has lifted the coal and ore from the solid embrace of the mountain, and the building stone from its sleep in the quarry; it has opened up channels to the sea, canals on land, and in both war and peace has been one of the great agencies of civilization.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
Textiles.
[Spinning and Weaving an Ancient Art]—[Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny]—[Arkwright’s Roll-Drawing Spinning Machine]—[Crompton’s Mule Spinner]—[The Cotton Gin]—[Ring Spinning]—[The Rabbeth Spindle]—[John Kay’s Flying Shuttle and Robert Kay’s Drop Box]—[Cartwright’s Power Loom]—[The Jacquard Loom]—[Crompton’s Fancy Loom]—[Bigelow’s Carpet Looms]—[Lyall Positive Motion Loom]—[Knitting Machines]—[Cloth Pressing Machinery]—[Artificial Silk]—[Mercerized Cloth].
Far back in the obscuring gloom of a prehistoric antiquity, man wore probably only the hirsute covering which nature gave him. As he emerged from barbarism, sentiments of modesty marked the evolution of his mind, and this, together with the need for a more sufficient protection against cold and heat, suggested an artificial covering for his body. At first he robbed the brute of his fleecy skin and wore it bodily. Later he learned to spin and weave; next to food and drink, clothing became a fundamental necessity, for without it his life could not extend outside of the limited zone of the tropics. Food and drink were to be found as nature’s free gifts, but clothing had to be made, and its manufacture constituted probably the oldest of all the living arts. The making of cloth may be said to be coeval with history. The Old Testament of the Bible is replete with references to spinning and weaving, and the cloths wrapped about the mummies of ancient Egypt, although thousands of years old, were of exceeding regularity and fineness.
So old an art, and so great and continuous a need for its products necessarily must have resulted in much development and progress. When the Nineteenth Century began, the world already enjoyed the results of Hargreaves’ spinning-jenny, Arkwright’s roll-drawing spinning machine, the mule spinner, the cotton gin, and the power loom, all of which were most radical inventions, equaling in importance, perhaps, any that have followed.
Prior to the invention of the spinning-jenny, the loose fibre was spun into yarns and thread by hand on the old-fashioned spinning wheel, each thread requiring the attention of one person. In 1763 Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny (see [Fig. 285]), in which a multiplicity of spindles was employed, whereby one person could attend to the making of many threads simultaneously. For this purpose the spindles were set upright at the end of the frame, and the rovings or strips of untwisted fibre were carried on bobbins on the inclined frame. The rovings extended from these bobbins to a reciprocating “clasp” held in the left hand of the workman, and thence extended to the spindles at the end of the frame. The workman drew out the rovings by moving the clasp back and forth, and at the same time turned the crank with his right hand to rotate the spindles. Hargreaves’ machine is shown and described in his British patent, No. 962 of 1770.