cotton manufacture

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Cotton was originally employed in Loughborough and became one of the first specialized hosiery-machine builders. After the introduction of the latch needle by Matthew Townsend in 1856, knitting frames developed rapidly. The circular frame was easier to work automatically, but attempts to apply power to the flat frame, which could produce fully fashioned work, culminated in 1863 with William Cotton's machine. In that year he invented a machine that could make a dozen or more stockings or hose simultaneously and knit fashioned garments of all kinds. The difficulty was to reduce automatically the number of stitches in the courses where the hose or garment narrowed to give it shape. Cotton had early opportunities to apply himself to the improvement of hosiery machines while employed in the patent shop of Cartwright \& Warner of Loughborough, where some of the first rotaries were made. He remained with the firm for twenty years, during which time sixty or seventy of these machines were turned out. Cotton then established a factory for the manufacture of warp fabrics, and it was here that he began to work on his ideas. He had no knowledge of the principles of engineering or drawing, so his method of making sketches and then getting his ideas roughed out involved much useless labour. After twelve years, in 1863, a patent was issued for the machine that became the basis of the Cotton's Patent type. This was a flat frame driven by rotary mechanism and remarkable for its adaptability. At first he built his machine upright, like a cottage piano, but after much thought and experimentation he conceived the idea of turning the upper part down flat so that the needles were in a vertical position instead of being horizontal, and the work was carried off horizontally instead of vertically. His first machine produced four identical pieces simultaneously, but this number was soon increased. Cotton was induced by the success of his invention to begin machine building as a separate business and thus established one of the first of a class of engineering firms that sprung up as an adjunct to the new hosiery manufacture. He employed only a dozen men and turned out six machines in the first year, entering into an agreement with Hine \& Mundella for their exclusive use. This was later extended to the firm of I. \& R.Morley. In 1878, Cotton began to build on his own account, and the business steadily increased until it employed some 200 workers and had an output of 100 machines a year.

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1. production

свё́ртывать произво́дство ( обычно постепенно) — phase out [phase back] production

сня́тый с произво́дства — out of production

2. ( добыча) production

3. ( изготовление) manufacture; ( из полуфабрикатов) fabrication

произво́дство по за́мкнутому ци́клу — captive manufacture

4. ( отрасль) industry

произво́дство без вы́хода на ры́нок — captive production

бонда́рное произво́дство — cooperage

бума́жное произво́дство — papermaking

произво́дство в о́пытных масшта́бах — pilot production

произво́дство в промы́шленных масшта́бах — production in quantity, commercial production

вспомога́тельное произво́дство

1. auxiliary process(es)

2. ( подразделение завода) auxiliary department

произво́дство га́за — (особ. природного) gas production; (особ. искусственного) gas generation

до́менное произво́дство — blast-furnace process

едини́чное произво́дство — individual [single-unit, piece-work] production

кни́жное произво́дство — book production

произво́дство ко́жи — leather manufacture

коксохими́ческое произво́дство — cake and by-product process

конве́ртерное произво́дство — converter process(es)

крупносери́йное произво́дство — large-lot [large-scale] production

кузне́чно-пре́ссовое произво́дство — press forging

кузне́чно-штампо́вочное произво́дство — press forging; ( объёмная штамповка) die forging

лесохими́ческое произво́дство — wood chemical industry

листопрока́тное произво́дство — ( толстого листа) plate rolling; ( тонкого листа) sheet rolling

лите́йное произво́дство — foundry

марте́новское произво́дство — open-hearth process

ма́ссовое произво́дство — mass production

мелкосери́йное произво́дство — small-lot [small-scale] production

моде́льное произво́дство — pattern-making

непреры́вное произво́дство — continuous process

произво́дство о́буви — shoe making

о́пытное произво́дство — pilot(-scale) production

полузаводско́е произво́дство хим. — pilot-scale process

пото́чное произво́дство — flow(-line) [in-line] production

прока́тное произво́дство — rolling

сва́рочное произво́дство — welding fabrication; ( раздел техники) welding engineering

сери́йное произво́дство — ( в противовес экспериментальному или опытному) quantity [full-scale] production; ( партиями) batch [series] production

произво́дство ста́ли — steelmaking

тексти́льное произво́дство — textile manufacture

произво́дство тепла́ — heat generation, heat production

труболите́йное произво́дство — pipe casting

трубопрока́тное произво́дство — pipe rolling

трубосва́рочное произво́дство — pipe welding

фабри́чное произво́дство — manufacturing, manufacture

произво́дство фо́сфорной кислоты́ экстракцио́нным спо́собом — production of phosphoric acid by the wet process

хлопчатобума́жное произво́дство — cotton manufacture

произво́дство чугуна́ — iron making

шве́йное произво́дство — clothing [garment] manufacture

шо́рно-седе́льное произво́дство — saddlery

шту́чное произво́дство — individual production

произво́дство электри́ческой эне́ргии — generation of electrical energy, electricity production

SUBJECT AREA: Metallurgy, Textiles

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John Wyatt was the eldest son of John and Jane Wyatt, who lived in the small village of Thickbroom in the parish of Weeford, near Lichfield. John the younger was educated at Lichfield school and then worked as a carpenter at Thickbroom till 1730. In 1732 he was in Birmingham, engaged by a man named Heely, a gunbarrel forger, who became bankrupt in 1734. Wyatt had invented a machine for making files and sought the help of Lewis Paul to manufacture this commercially.

The surviving papers of Paul and Wyatt in Birmingham are mostly undated and show a variety of machines with which they were involved. There was a machine for "making lead hard" which had rollers, and "a Gymcrak of some consequence" probably refers to a machine for boring barrels or the file-making machine. Wyatt is said to have been one of the unsuccessful competitors for the erection of London Bridge in 1736. He invented and perfected the compound-lever weighing machine. He had more success with this: after 1744, machines for weighing up to five tons were set up at Birmingham, Chester, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield and Liverpool. Road construction, bridge building, hydrostatics, canals, water-powered engines and many other schemes received his attention and it is said that he was employed for a time after 1744 by Matthew Boulton.

It is certain that in April 1735 Paul and Wyatt were working on their spinning machine and Wyatt was making a model of it in London in 1736, giving up his work in Birmingham. The first patent, in 1738, was taken out in the name of Lewis Paul. It is impossible to know which of these two invented what. This first patent covers a wide variety of descriptions of the vital roller drafting to draw out the fibres, and it is unknown which system was actually used. Paul's carding patent of 1748 and his second spinning patent of 1758 show that he moved away from the system and principles upon which Arkwright built his success. Wyatt and Paul's spinning machines were sufficiently promising for a mill to be set up in 1741 at the Upper Priory, Birmingham, that was powered by two asses. Wyatt was the person responsible for constructing the machinery. Edward Cave established another at Northampton powered by water while later Daniel Bourn built yet another at Leominster. Many others were interested too. The Birmingham mill did not work for long and seems to have been given up in 1743. Wyatt was imprisoned for debt in The Fleet in 1742, and when released in 1743 he tried for a time to run the Birmingham mill and possibly the Northampton one. The one at Leominster burned down in 1754, while the Northampton mill was advertised for sale in 1756. This last mill may have been used again in conjunction with the 1758 patent. It was Wyatt whom Daniel Bourn contacted about a grant for spindles for his Leominster mill in 1748, but this seems to have been Wyatt's last association with the spinning venture.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Lewis Paul, apparently of French Huguenot extraction, was quite young when his father died. His father was Physician to Lord Shaftsbury, who acted as Lewis Paul's guardian. In 1728 Paul made a runaway match with a widow and apparently came into her property when she died a year later. He must have subsequently remarried. In 1732 he invented a pinking machine for making the edges of shrouds out of which he derived some profit.

Why Paul went to Birmingham is unknown, but he helped finance some of Wyatt's earlier inventions. Judging by the later patents taken out by Paul, it is probable that he was the one interested in spinning, turning to Wyatt for help in the construction of his spinning machine because he had no mechanical skills. The two men may have been involved in this as early as 1733, although it is more likely that they began this work in 1735. Wyatt went to London to construct a model and in 1736 helped to apply for a patent, which was granted in 1738 in the name of Paul. The patent shows that Paul and Wyatt had a number of different ways of spinning in mind, but contains no drawings of the machines. In one part there is a description of sets of rollers to draw the cotton out more finely that could have been similar to those later used by Richard Arkwright. However, it would seem that Paul and Wyatt followed the other main method described, which might be called spindle drafting, where the fibres are drawn out between the nip of a pair of rollers and the tip of the spindle; this method is unsatisfactory for continuous spinning and results in an uneven yarn.

The spinning venture was supported by Thomas Warren, a well-known Birmingham printer, Edward Cave of Gentleman's Magazine, Dr Robert James of fever-powder celebrity, Mrs Desmoulins, and others. Dr Samuel Johnson also took much interest. In 1741 a mill powered by two asses was equipped at the Upper Priory, Birmingham, with, machinery for spinning cotton being constructed by Wyatt. Licences for using the invention were sold to other people including Edward Cave, who established a mill at Northampton, so the enterprise seemed to have great promise. A spinning machine must be supplied with fibres suitably prepared, so carding machines had to be developed. Work was in hand on one in 1740 and in 1748 Paul took out another patent for two types of carding device, possibly prompted by the patent taken out by Daniel Bourn. Both of Paul's devices were worked by hand and the carded fibres were laid onto a strip of paper. The paper and fibres were then rolled up and placed in the spinning machine. In 1757 John Dyer wrote a poem entitled The Fleece, which describes a circular spinning machine of the type depicted in a patent taken out by Paul in 1758. Drawings in this patent show that this method of spinning was different from Arkwright's. Paul endeavoured to have the machine introduced into the Foundling Hospital, but his death in early 1759 stopped all further development. He was buried at Paddington on 30 April that year.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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As a youth, Dyer constructed an unsinkable life-boat but did not immediately pursue his mechanical bent, for at 16 he entered the counting-house of a French refugee named Nancrède and succeeded to part of the business. He first went to England in 1801 and finally settled in 1811 when he married Ellen Jones (d. 1842) of Gower Street, London. Dyer was already linked with American inventors and brought to England Perkins's plan for steel engraving in 1809, shearing and nail-making machines in 1811, and also received plans and specifications for Fulton's steamboats. He seems to have acted as a sort of British patent agent for American inventors, and in 1811 took out a patent for carding engines and a card clothing machine. In 1813 there was a patent for spinning long-fibred substances such as hemp, flax or grasses, and in 1825 there was a further patent for card making machinery. Joshua Field, on his tour through Britain in 1821, saw a wire drawing machine and a leather splitting machine at Dyer's works as well as the card-making machines. At first Dyer lived in Camden Town, London, but he had a card clothing business in Birmingham. He moved to Manchester c.1816, where he developed an extensive engineering works under the name "Joseph C.Dyer, patent card manufacturers, 8 Stanley Street, Dale Street". In 1832 he founded another works at Gamaches, Somme, France, but this enterprise was closed in 1848 with heavy losses through the mismanagement of an agent. In 1825 Dyer improved on Danforth's roving frame and started to manufacture it. While it was still a comparatively crude machine when com-pared with later versions, it had the merit of turning out a large quantity of work and was very popular, realizing a large sum of money. He patented the machine that year and must have continued his interest in these machines as further patents followed in 1830 and 1835. In 1821 Dyer had been involved in the foundation of the Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) and he was linked with the construction of the Liverpool \& Manchester Railway. He was not so successful with the ill-fated Bank of Manchester, of which he was a director and in which he lost £98,000. Dyer played an active role in the community and presented many papers to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. He helped to establish the Royal Institution in London and the Mechanics Institution in Manchester. In 1830 he was a member of the delegation to Paris to take contributions from the town of Manchester for the relief of those wounded in the July revolution and to congratulate Louis-Philippe on his accession. He called for the reform of Parliament and helped to form the Anti-Corn Law League. He hated slavery and wrote several articles on the subject, both prior to and during the American Civil War.

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See also: Arnold, Aza

"working;

Verarbeitung;

Bearbeitung;

usinagem"

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f di materia prima processing

di legno carving

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lavorazione s.f.

1 (il lavorare un materiale) working, manufacturing, processing, making; (fattura) workmanship: lavorazione a caldo, hot working; lavorazione a catena, line production; lavorazione a mano, handwork; lavorazione a macchina, machining; lavorazione a pieno ritmo, full-scale processing; lavorazione dei metalli, metalworking; lavorazione del cotone, cotton manufacture; lavorazione del tabacco, tobacco manufacture; lavorazione del vetro, glass making; lavorazione della carta, paper making; lavorazione per lotti, batch process; lavorazione su commessa, per conto terzi, jobbing; lavorazione perfetta, finished (o faultless) manufacture (o workmanship); ciclo di lavorazione, production (o manufacturing) cycle; impianti per la lavorazione, processing (o manufacturing) equipment; essere in lavorazione, to be in progress (o in the course of manufacture); entrare in lavorazione, to enter the production cycle

2 (complesso delle operazioni per la realizzazione di un'opera) production, making: iniziare, sospendere la lavorazione di un film, to start, to stop the production of a film

3 (agr.) tilling, cultivation.

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sostantivo femminile

1) making, manufacturing, processing

2) agr. tillage, cultivation

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lavorazione

/lavorat'tsjone/

sostantivo f.

 1 making, manufacturing, processing; lavorazione delle carni meat processing; lavorazione a macchina machine work, machining; ciclo di lavorazione operation schedule; metodo di lavorazione processing techinque; essere in lavorazione to be in progress

 2 agr. tillage, cultivation.

1) General subject: cotton mill, cotton-mill

2) Engineering: cotton manufacture, cotton-spinning mill

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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The claims of Highs to have invented both the spinning jenny and the waterframe have been dismissed by most historians. Thomas Highs was a reedmaker of Leigh, Lancashire. In about 1763 he had as a neighbour John Kay, the clockmaker from Warrington, whom he employed to help him construct his machines. During this period they were engaged in making a spinning jenny, but after several months of toil, in a fit of despondency, they threw the machine through the attic window. Highs persevered, however, and made a jenny that could spin six threads. The comparatively sophisticated arrangements for drawing and twisting at the same time, as depicted by Guest (1823), suggest that this machine came after the one invented by James Hargreaves. Guest claims that Highs made this machine between 1764 and 1766 and in the following two years constructed another, in which the spindles were placed in a circle. In 1771 Highs moved to Manchester, where he constructed a double jenny that was displayed at the Manchester Exchange, and received a subscription of £200 from the cotton manufacturers. However, all this occurred after Hargreaves had constructed his jenny. In the trial of Arkwright's patent during 1781, Highs gave evidence. He was recalled from Ireland, where he had been superintending the building of cotton-spinning machinery for Baron Hamilton's newly erected mill at Balbriggan, north of Dublin. Then in 1785, during the next trial of Arkwright's patent, Highs claimed that in 1767 he had made rollers for drawing out the cotton before spinning. This would have been for a different type of spinning machine, similar to the one later constructed by Arkwright. Highs was helped by John Kay and it was these rollers that Kay subsequently built for Arkwright. If the drawing shown by Guest is correct, then Highs was working on the wrong principles because his rollers were spaced too far apart and were not held together by weights, with the result that the twist would have passed into the drafting zone, producing uneven drawing.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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Thomas Johnson was an assistant to William Radcliffe c.1802 in his developments of the sizing machine and hand looms. Johnson is described by Edward Baines (1835) as "an ingenious but dissipated young man to whom he [Radcliffe] explained what he wanted, and whose fertile invention suggested a great variety of expedients, so that he obtained the name of the “conjuror” among his fellow-workmen". Johnson's genius, and Radcliffe's judgement and perseverance, at length produced the dressing-machine that was soon applied to power looms and made their use economic. Cotton warps had to be dressed with a starch paste to prevent them from fraying as they were being woven. Up to this time, the paste had had to be applied as the warp was unwound from the back of the loom, which meant that only short lengths could be treated and then left to dry, holding up the weaver. Radcliffe carried out the dressing and beaming in a separate machine so that weaving could proceed without interruption. Work on the dressing-machine was carried out in 1802 and patents were taken out in 1803 and 1804. These were made out in Johnson's name because Radcliffe was afraid that if his own name were used other people, particularly foreigners, would discover his secrets. Two more patents were taken out for improvements to hand looms. The first of these was a take-up motion for the woven cloth that automatically wound the cloth onto a roller as the weaver operated the loom. This was later incorporated by H.Horrocks into his own power loom design.

Radcliffe and Johnson also developed the "dandy-loom", which was a more compact form of hand loom and later became adapted for weaving by power. Johnson was the inventor of the first circular or revolving temples, which kept the woven cloth at the right width. In the patent specifications there is a patent in 1805 by Thomas Johnson and James Kay for an improved power loom and another in 1807 for a vertical type of power loom. Johnson could have been involved with further patents in the 1830s and 1840s for vertical power looms and dressing-machines, which would put his death after 1846.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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On 6 April 1789 John Austin wrote to James Watt, seeking advice about patenting "a weaving loom I have invented to go by the hand, horse, water or any other constant power, to comb, brush, or dress the yarn at the same time as it is weaving \& by which one man will do the work of three and make superior work to what can be done by the common loom" (Boulton \& Watt Collection, Birmingham, James Watt Papers, JW/22). Watt replied that "there is a Clergyman by the name of Cartwright at Doncaster who has a patent for a similar contrivance" (Boulton \& Watt Collection, Birmingham, Letter Book 1, 15 April 1789). Watt pointed out that there was a large manufactory running at Doncaster and something of the same kind at Manchester with working power looms. Presumably, this reply deterred Austin from taking out a patent. However, some members of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce continued developing the loom, and in 1798 one that was tried at the spinning mill of J.Monteith, of Pollokshaws, near Glasgow, answered the purpose so well that a building was erected and thirty of the looms were installed. Later, in 1800, this number was increased to 200, all of which were driven by a steam engine, and it was stated that one weaver and a boy could tend from three to five of these looms.

Austin's loom was worked by eccentrics, or cams. There was one cam on each side with "a sudden beak or projection" that drove the levers connected to the picking pegs, while other cams worked the heddles and drove the reed. The loom was also fitted with a weft stop motion and could produce more cloth than a hand loom, and worked at about sixty picks per minute. The pivoting of the slay at the bottom allowed the loom to be much more compact than previous ones.

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See also: Cartwright, Revd Edmund