(broadcloth)

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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To give a smooth surface to cloth such as the old English broadcloth, the nap was raised and then sheared off. Hand-operated shears of enormous size cut the fibres standing proud of the surface while the cloth was laid over a curved table top. Great skill was required to achieve a smooth finish. Various attempts, such as that in 1784 by James Harmer, a clergyman of Sheffield, were made to mechanize the process by placing several pairs of shears in a frame and operating them by cranks, but these were not successful. The first version of a rotary machine was made by Samuel Griswold Dore (sometimes spelt Dorr), an American from Albany, New York. His first frame, patented in 1792 in America, consisted of a wheel of twelve "spring knives" that were fixed like spokes and set at an angle of about 45° to the horizontal. Under this wheel, and on the same axle, rode a second one, carrying four "tangent knives" that lay almost flat upon the cloth. As the two wheels rotated above the cloth's surface, they acted in "the manner of shears". The principle used in Dore's machine is certainly different from that in the later, successful machine of John Lewis. The machine was thought to be too complicated and expensive for American woollen manufacturers and was much better suited to circumstances in the English industry, Dore therefore moved to England. However, in his British patent in 1793, he introduced a different design, which was more like that on which both Lewis's machine and the lawnmower were based, with knives set across the periphery of a hollow cylinder or barrel. Little more was heard of his machine in Britain, possibly because of Dore's death, which is mentioned in his patent of 1794, although it was used in America and France. Dore's son and others improved the machine in America and brought new specifications to England in 1811, when several patents were taken out.

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SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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To give a smooth surface to cloth such as the old English broadcloth, the nap was raised and then sheared off. Hand-operated shears of enormous size were used to cut the fibres that stuck up when the cloth was laid over a curved table top. Great skill was required to achieve a smooth finish. Various attempts, such as that in 1784 by James Harmer, a clergyman of Sheffield, were made to mechanize the process by placing several pairs of shears in a frame and operating them by cranks, but success was not achieved. Samuel G. Dow of Albany, New York, patented a rotary shearer in England in 1794, and there was Samuel Dore in the same year too. John Lewis never claimed that he invented the rotary cutter, and it is possible that he made have seen drawings or actual examples of these earlier machines. His claim in his patent of 1815 was that, for the first time, he brought together a number of desirable features in one machine for shearing cloth to achieve the first really successful example. The local story in the Stroudwater district in Gloucestershire is that Lewis obtained this idea from Budding, who as a lad worked for the Lewis family, clothiers at Brinscombe Mills; Budding invented a lawn mower with rotary barrel blades that works on the same principle, patenting it in 1830. In the shearing machine, the cloth was moved underneath the blades, which could be of the same width so that only one operation was needed for each side. Other inventors had similar ideas, and a Stroud engineer, Stephen Price, took out a patent a month after Lewis did. These machines spread quickly in the Gloucestershire textile industry, and by 1830 hand-shearing was extinct. John Lewis was the son of Joseph, who had inherited the Brinscombe Mills in 1790 but must have died before 1815, when his children mortgaged the property for £12,000. Joseph's three sons, George, William and John, worked the mill for a time, but in 1840 William was there alone.

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