Great Inventions and Discoveries

by Willis Duff Piercy

Valuable as was the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, it was adapted only to producing the transverse threads, or the woof. It could not produce sufficient firmness and hardness for the longitudinal threads, or the warp. In 1767 Richard Arkwright, another native of Lancashire, invented the spinning-frame, which was able to yield a thread fine enough and firm enough to make the warp. At the time of his invention Arkwright was so poor that he had to be furnished with a suit of clothes before he looked respectable enough to appear at an election. Like Hargreaves, he also was persecuted. Both were driven out of Lancashire to Nottingham to escape popular rage. Arkwright's patent was annulled, and at one time his factory was destroyed by the populace in the presence of a powerful military and police force, who did nothing to restrain it. And why were Hargreaves and Arkwright driven out of Lancashire? They had invented machines that would produce more and cheaper clothing; that would give powerful impetus to the cotton and the woolen industries; that would lift the race higher in the path-way of civilization. What was the reason? Misunderstanding, prejudice, and selfishness. The interests of the few were shutting out the interests of the world. And these interests of the few were imaginary.

In spite of all opposition, however, Arkwright succeeded, and may be regarded as the founder of the modern factory system.

In 1779 Samuel Crompton, another Lancashire inventor, produced an improved spinning machine called the spinning-mule. This invention combined the good qualities of the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves and the spinning-frame of Arkwright. Its chief point of excellence lay in the fineness of the threads which it spun; from this kind of thread could be made finer fabrics than were possible with the machines of Hargreaves and of Arkwright.

Crompton was very poor. By day he worked at the loom or on the farm to earn bread for himself, his mother, and his two sisters, and at night he toiled away on his invention. No sooner had he perfected his machine than he was beset by persons seeking to rob him of its benefits. All kinds of devices were employed for learning the secret. Ladders were placed against his windows in order that unscrupulous spectators might get a view of the machine. He did not dare to leave the house, lest his secret be stolen from him. He had spent his last farthing upon the invention and had no funds for securing a patent. A manufacturer persuaded him to disclose to the trade the nature of his invention under promise of a liberal subscription; but Crompton received only a paltry sum amounting to less than $350. He finally saved up enough money to begin manufacturing on a small scale, but his rivals had already out-distanced him. He died in June, 1827, disspirited at the ill treatment he had received, but not until he had seen his invention a powerful agency in British cloth manufacturing.

An interesting glimpse of the days when weaving was done by hand in England may be found in the first chapter of George Eliot's Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe. The hand-loom in weaving was superseded by the power-loom early in the nineteenth century. The loom was the invention of the Rev. Edmund Cartwright, an English clergyman, poet, and inventor. The date of the invention was 1785. Cartwright's first loom was very crude, but he subsequently improved it. The idea for the invention of his power-loom came to Cartwright after a visit to the spinning mills of Arkwright. He too was subjected to opposition from the weavers on account of his invention. At one time he was associated with Robert Fulton in his experiments in applying steam to navigation.

CHAPTER XVII

AERONAUTICS

To fly in the air has been the dream of all peoples in all ages. "Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I fly away and be at rest!" sang the Psalmist. It would seem from the recent inventions in the science of aeronautics that this dream is to become in the near future a practical experience of our every-day lives.

A balloon is an apparatus with an envelope filled with gas, the specific gravity of which is less than that of the atmosphere near the surface of the earth. It is practically at the mercy of air-currents. The science of balloon aeronautics dates definitely from 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers at Angonay in France constructed their first balloons. These Frenchmen and their successors developed the spherical balloons to a state of efficiency which has scarcely been improved upon to this day. The balloon in time came to be adopted throughout Europe for military uses, mainly for the purpose of spying out the enemy's position and defenses.