FIG. 292.—BRANSON 15⁄16 AUTOMATIC KNITTER.
The earliest circular knitting machine was by Brunel, described in British patent No. 3,993, of 1816. Power was applied to the knitting frame by Bailey in 1831, and the latch needle was patented in the United States by Hibbert, January 9, 1849, No. 6,025. This patent was extended for seven years from January 9, 1863, and covered a very important and universally used feature of the knitting machine. Research has shown, however, that the latch was not broadly new with Hibbert, as it appeared in the French patent to Jeandeau, No. 1,900, of April 25, 1806. Among the earlier knitting machines, the straight reciprocating type was most in evidence, and of which the Lamb machine was a popular form. The increased speed and capacity of the circular machine have, however, caused it to largely supersede the others. In the circular machine a circular series of vertical parallel needles slide in grooves in a cylinder, and are raised and lowered successively by an external rotating cylinder which has on the inner side cams that act upon the needles. The Branson 15⁄16 Automatic Knitter, shown in [Fig. 292], is a good modern illustration. It performs automatically fifteen-sixteenths of the various movements which ordinarily would be performed by hand on a hand machine. Its salient features are covered by patents No. 333,102, December 29, 1885, and No. 519,170, May 1, 1894. About 2,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of knitting and netting, and the value of hosiery and knit goods in the United States in 1890 was $67,241,013.
An important branch of the textile art is cloth finishing, whereby the rough surface of the cloth as it comes from the loom is rendered soft and smooth. One method is to raise the nap of the cloth by pulling out the fibre by a multitude of fine points. Originally this was done by combing it with teasles, a sort of dried burr of vegetable growth, having a multitude of fine hook-shaped points. Machines with fine metal card teeth are now largely used for this purpose, and of which the planetary napping machine of Ott, patent No. 344,981, July 6, 1886, is an example. Another method of finishing the cloth is to iron or press it. Plate presses were first used in which smooth plates were folded in alternate layers with the cloth and pressure then applied, but in later years continuous rotary presses have been employed, that of Gessner, patent No. 206,718, August 6, 1878, re-issue No. 9,076, 9,077, February 17, 1880, is one of the earliest examples of a continuous rotary press. The old Gessner presses of Saxony were the pioneers in this field. A modern Gessner cloth press is seen in [Fig. 293].
FIG. 293.—MODERN “GESSNER” CLOTH PRESSING MACHINE.
In the field of textiles there are many related arts and machines. There are hat felting and finishing machines, darning machines, quilting machines, embroidering machines, processes and apparatus for dyeing and sizing, machines for printing fabrics, machines for making rope and cord, machines for winding and working silk, and in treating the raw material there are cotton-pickers, cotton baling presses, cotton openers and cleaners, flax brakes and hackling machines, feeding devices, wool carding and cleaning apparatus, all in variety and numbers that defy both comment and count.
In fabrics every class of fibre has been called into requisition. Flax, wool, silk, and cotton have been supplemented with the fibres of metal, of glass, of cocoanut, pine needles, ramie, wood-pulp, and of many other plants, leaves and grasses.
Artificial silk is made out of a chemically prepared composition, and the fibres are spun by processes simulating not only the act of the silkworm, but its product in quality. Vandura silk was spun from an aqueous solution of gelatine by forcing it through a fine capillary tube, but it attained little or no practical value. A far more important artificial silk is covered by the patents to De Chardonnet, No. 394,559, December 18, 1888; No. 460,629, October 6, 1891, and No. 531,158, December 18, 1894, and also in subsequent patents to Lehner and to Turk. These all relate to the manufacture of artificial silk by spinning threads or filaments from pyroxiline (solution of gun cotton), collodion, or some such glutinous solution which evaporates rapidly, leaving a tiny thread, having most of the characteristics of silk and produced by the same method employed by the silk worm when it expresses and draws out its viscid liquid. The De Chardonnet artificial silk took a “Grand Prix” at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and the industry is growing to considerable proportions. Large works are in operation at Besançon, in France, producing 7,000 pounds per week, and it is said that the plant is to be increased to a capacity of 2,000 pounds a day. Similar works at Avon, near Coventry, England, have an equal capacity, and other factories are about to be established in Belgium and Germany.