Not only is this the case in the final stages of production, but it is especially true of most of the preparatory processes, whether used for the production of coarse, medium or fine yarns.
As is well known, the great principle of drawing rollers is, that the cotton is passed through three or four pairs of rollers in quick succession, and attenuated by each pair in turn, each pair being made to revolve more quickly than the preceding pair. This identical process is repeated in machine after machine, until finally the bulk of cotton is reduced to a fine thread, of which, in some cases, it takes two or three hundred miles to weigh one pound. Even in what are termed medium numbers or counts of cotton yarn, there are from fifteen to twenty-five miles of thread in a pound avoirdupois, and more than a thousand million pounds of such yarns are spun annually.
The year 1767 found Arkwright entirely absorbed in his ideas of roller drawing, and he got the clockmaker Kay to journey with him to Nottingham, possibly thinking that what had been meted out to other inventors in Lancashire should not be repeated in his case. He here collected about him a number of friends, moneyed and otherwise, who helped in his evolution of spinning machinery.
A man named John Smalley of Preston found him the wherewithal to carry on his experiments first at Preston and later on at Nottingham. Certainly what he put up at Nottingham gave such promise of practical utility, that two experienced business men were led to join him in partnership, and the three of them, Need, Strutt, and Arkwright, very soon had mills built in Nottingham, Cromford and Matlock. The first-named mill was worked by horses, the two latter by water, hence the common name of water frame, given to the machines of Arkwright.
The gentlemen taken into partnership were able and qualified to give good sound advice and help to Arkwright, and about the middle of the year 1769 he took out a patent for his "water frame."
To use his own words, in his specification he "had, by great study and long application, invented a new piece of machinery, never before found out, practised or used, for the making of weft or yarn from cotton, flax, and wool; which would be of great utility to a great many manufacturers, as well as to His Majesty's subjects in general, by employing a great many poor people in working the said machinery, and by making the said weft or yarn much superior in quality to any heretofore manufactured or made."
No useful purpose could be served by reproducing Arkwright's description of the machine in question, but a picture of the actual machine is shown in [Fig. 22].
Fig. 22.—Arkwright's machine (after Baines).
The most important feature of the invention, of course, was the drawing out or attenuating of the cotton by rollers revolving at different speeds. But it was also essential that proper mechanism should be provided by which twist would be put into the yarn to make it sufficiently strong; and furthermore, it was necessary to arrange for the attenuated and twisted cotton to be automatically guided and coiled up or wound up into a convenient form. As we have seen, the drawing out of the cotton finer he accomplished by the Drawing Rollers originally invented by Lewis Paul, while for the latter purpose he successfully adapted the principle already existing in the Saxony wheel, used in the linen manufacture, with which he probably became acquainted during his residence at Preston.