Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

The ancient and isolated races of Mexico had also learned the art of spinning and weaving. When the Spaniards first entered that country they found the natives clothed in cotton, woven plain, or in many colours.

After forty centuries of unchanged life, it occurred to John Kay of Bury, England, that the weaving process might be improved. In 1733 he had succeeded in inventing the picker motion, “picker peg,” or “fly.” This consisted of mechanical means for throwing the shuttle across the web by a sudden jerk of a bar—one at each side—operated by pulling a cord. He could thus throw the shuttle farther and quicker than by hand—make wider cloth, and do as much work in the same time as two men had done before. This improvement put weaving ahead of spinning, and the weavers were continually calling on the spindlers for more weft yarns. This set the wits of inventors at work to better the spinning means.

At the same time that Kay was struggling with his invention of the flying shuttle, another poor man, but with less success, had conceived another idea, as to spinning. John Wyatt of Lichfield thought it would be a good thing to draw out the sliver of cotton or wool between two sets of rollers, one end of the sliver being held and fed by one set of rollers, while the opposite end was being drawn by the other set of rollers moving at a greater speed. His invention, although not then used, was patented in 1738 by Lewis Paul, who in time won a fortune by it, while Wyatt died poor, and it was claimed that Paul and not Wyatt was the true inventor.

About 1764 a little accident occurring in the home of James Hargreaves, an English weaver of Blackburn, suggested to that observant person an invention that was as important as that of Kay. He was studying hard how to get up a machine to meet the weavers’ demands for cotton yarns. One day while Hargreaves was spinning, surrounded by his children, one of them upset the spinning wheel, probably in a children’s frolic, and after it fell and while lying in a horizontal position, with the spindle in a vertical position, and the wheel and the spindle still running, the idea flashed into Hargreaves’ mind that a number of spindles might be placed upright and run from the same power. Thus prompted he commenced work, working in secret and at odd hours, and finally, after two or three years, completed a crude machine, which he called the spinning jenny, some say after his wife, and others that the name came from “gin,” the common abbreviated name of an engine. This machine had eight or ten spindles driven by cords or belts from the same wheel, and operated by hand or foot. The rovings at one end were attached to the spindles and their opposite portions held together and drawn out by a clasp held in the hand. When the thread yarn was drawn out sufficiently it was wound upon the spindles by a reverse movement of the wheel. Thus finally were means provided to supply the demand for the weft yarns. One person with one of Hargreaves’ machines could in the same time spin as much as twenty or thirty persons with their wheels. But those who were to be most benefited by the invention were the most alarmed, for fear of the destruction of their business, and they arose in their wrath, and demolished Hargreaves’ labours. It was a hard time for inventors. The law of England then was that patents were invalid if the invention was made known before the patent was applied for, and part of the public insisted on demolishing the invention if it was so made known, so that to avoid the law and the lawless the harassed inventors kept and worked their inventions in secret as long as they could. Hargreaves fled to Nottingham, where works were soon started with his spinning jennys. The ideas of Kay, Wyatt and Hargreaves are said to have been anticipated in Italy. There were makers of cloths at Florence, and also in Spain and the Netherlands, who were far in advance of the English and French in this art, but the descriptions of machinery employed by them are too vague and scanty to sustain the allegation.

And now the long ice age of hand working was breaking up, and the age of machine production was fast setting in. Hargreaves was in the midst of his troubles and his early triumphs, in 1765-1769, when Richard Arkwright entered the field. Arkwright, first a barber, and then a travelling buyer of hair, and finally a knight, learned, as he travelled through Lancashire, Lichfield, Blackburn and Nottingham, of the inventions and labours of Wyatt, Kay and Hargreaves. Possessed as he was of some mechanical skill and inventive genius, and realising that the harvest was ripe and the labourers few, entered the field of inventions, and with the help of Kay, revived the old ideas of John Wyatt and Lewis Paul of spinning by rollers, which had now slumbered for thirty years. Kay and Arkwright constructed a working model, and on this Arkwright by hard pushing and hard work obtained capital, and improved, completed and patented his machine. The machine was first used by him in a mill erected at Nottingham and worked by horses; then at Cromford, and in this mill the power used to drive the spinning machine was a water wheel. His invention was therefore given the name of the water frame, which it retained long after steam had been substituted for water as the driving power. It was also named the throstle, from the fact that it gave a humming or singing sound while at work; but it is commonly known as the drawing frame. Arkwright patented useful improvements. He had to contend with mobs and with the courts, which combined to destroy his machines and his patent, but he finally succeeded in establishing mills, and in earning from the Government, manufacturers, and the public a great and well-merited munificence.

It is a remarkable coincidence that Watt’s steam engine patent and Arkwright’s first patent for his spinning machine were issued in the same year—1769. The new era of invention was dawning fast.

Then, in 1776, came Samuel Crompton of Bolton, who invented a combination of the jenny of Hargreaves and the roller water frame of Arkwright, and to distinguish his invention from the others he named it the “mule.” The mule was a carriage on wheels to which the spindles were attached. When the mule was drawn out one way on its frame the rovings were drawn from bobbins through rollers on a stationary frame, stretched and twisted into threads, and then as the mule was run back the spun threads were wound on spools on the spindles. The mule entirely superseded the use of the jenny. Notwithstanding the advantage in names the mule did more delicate work than the jenny. It avoided the continuous stretch on the thread of the jenny by first completing the thread and then winding it. Crompton’s mule was moved back and forth by hand. Roberts subsequently made it self-acting. Next, followed in England the Rev. Edward Cartwright, who, turning his attention to looms, invented the first loom run by machinery, the first power loom, 1784-85. Then the rioters turned on him, and he experienced the same attentions received by Hargreaves and Arkwright. The ignorance of ages died in this branch of human progress, as it often dies in others, with a violent wrench. But the age of steam had at last come, and with it the spinning machine, the power loom, the printing press, and the discovery among men of the powers of the mind, their freedom to exercise such powers, and their right to possess the fruits of their labours.

The completed inventions of Arkwright and others, combined with Watt’s steam engine, revolutionised trade, and resulted in the establishment of mills and factories. A thousand spindles whirled where one hummed before. The factory life which drew the women and girls from their country homes to heated, and closely occupied, ill ventilated buildings within town limits, was, however, not regarded as an improvement in the matter of health; and it was a long time before mills were constructed and operated with the view to the correction of this evil.

The great increase in demand for cotton produced by these machine inventions could not have been met had it not been for Eli Whitney’s invention of the saw gin in America in 1793. The cleaning of the seed from the cotton accomplished by this machine produced as great a revolution in the culture of cotton in America as the inventions of Arkwright and others accomplished in spinning and weaving in England. America had also learned of Arkwright’s machinery. Samuel Slater, a former employee of Arkwright, introduced it to Rhode Island in 1789, and built a great cotton mill there in 1793. Others followed in Massachusetts. Within twenty years after the introduction of Arkwright’s machines in the United States there were a hundred mills there with a hundred thousand spindles.

As has been said, it was customary for weavers to make the warp on their looms at one place, and the spinners to furnish the yarns for the weft from their homes, and even after the spinning machines were invented the spinning and weaving were done at separate places. It remained for Francis C. Lowell of Boston, who had been studying the art of spinning and weaving in England and Scotland and the inventions of Arkwright and Crompton, to establish in 1813 at Waltham, Mass., with the aid of Paul Moody, machinist, the first factory in the world wherein were combined under one roof all the processes for converting cotton into cloth.