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1 Hargreaves, James
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. c.1720–1 Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn, Englandd. April 1778 Nottingham, England[br]English inventor of the first successful machine to spin more than a couple of yarns of cotton or wool at once.[br]James Hargreaves was first a carpenter and then a hand-loom weaver at Stanhill, Blackburn, probably making Blackburn Checks or Greys from linen warps and cotton weft. An invention ascribed to him doubled production in the preparatory carding process before spinning. Two or three cards were nailed to the same stock and the upper one was suspended from the ceiling by a cord and counterweight. Around 1762 Robert Peel (1750–1830) sought his assistance in constructing a carding engine with cylinders that may have originated with Daniel Bourn, but this was not successful. In 1764, inspired by seeing a spinning wheel that continued to revolve after it had been knocked over accidentally, Hargreaves invented his spinning jenny. The first jennies had horizontal wheels and could spin eight threads at once. To spin on this machine required a great deal of skill. A length of roving was passed through the clamp or clove. The left hand was used to close this and draw the roving away from the spindles which were rotated by the spinner turning the horizontal wheel with the right hand. The spindles twisted the fibres as they were being drawn out. At the end of the draw, the spindles continued to be rotated until sufficient twist had been put into the fibres to make the finished yarn. This was backed off from the tips of the spindles by reversing them and then, with the spindles turning in the spinning direction once more, the yarn was wound on by the right hand rotating the spindles, the left hand pushing the clove back towards them and one foot operating a pedal which guided the yarn onto the spindles by a faller wire. A piecer was needed to rejoin the yarns when they broke. At first Hargreaves's jenny was worked only by his family, but then he sold two or three of them, possibly to Peel. In 1768, local opposition and a riot in which his house was gutted forced him to flee to Nottingham. He entered into partnership there with Thomas James and established a cotton mill. In 1770 he followed Arkwright's example and sought to patent his machine and brought an action for infringement against some Lancashire manufacturers, who offered £3,000 in settlement. Hargreaves held out for £4,000, but he was unable to enforce his patent because he had sold jennies before leaving Lancashire. Arkwright's "water twist" was more suitable for the Nottingham hosiery industry trade than jenny yarn and in 1777 Hargreaves replaced his own machines with Arkwright's. When he died the following year, he is said to have left property valued at £7,000 and his widow received £400 for her share in the business. Once the jenny had been made public, it was quickly improved by other inventors and the number of spindles per machine increased. In 1784, there were reputed to be 20,000 jennies of 80 spindles each at work. The jenny greatly eased the shortage of cotton weft for weavers.[br]Bibliography1770, British patent no. 962 (spinning jenny).Further ReadingC.Aspin and S.D.Chapman, 1964, James Hargreaves and the Spinning Jenny, Helmshore Local History Society (the fullest account of Hargreaves's life and inventions).For descriptions of his invention, see W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London; R.L. Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester; and W.A.Hunter, 1951–3, "James Hargreaves and the invention of the spinning jenny", Transactions ofthe Newcomen Society 28.A.P.Wadsworth and J. de L.Mann, 1931, The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, Manchester (a good background to the whole of this period).RLH -
2 Highs, Thomas
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]fl. 1760s England[br]English reedmaker who claimed to have invented both the spinning jenny and the waterframe.[br]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.[br]Further ReadingR.Guest, 1823, A Compendious History of the Cotton-Manufacture: With a Disproval of the Claim of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of its Ingenious Machinery, Manchester (Highs's claim for the invention of his spinning machines).R.S.Fitton, 1989, The Arkwrights, Spinners of Fortune, Manchester (an examination of Highs's claims).R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester (discusses the technical problems of the invention).RLH -
3 Crompton, Samuel
SUBJECT AREA: Textiles[br]b. 3 December 1753 Firwood, near Bolton, Lancashire, Englandd. 26 June 1827 Bolton, Lancashire, England[br]English inventor of the spinning mule.[br]Samuel Crompton was the son of a tenant farmer, George, who became the caretaker of the old house Hall-i-th-Wood, near Bolton, where he died in 1759. As a boy, Samuel helped his widowed mother in various tasks at home, including weaving. He liked music and made his own violin, with which he later was to earn some money to pay for tools for building his spinning mule. He was set to work at spinning and so in 1769 became familiar with the spinning jenny designed by James Hargreaves; he soon noticed the poor quality of the yarn produced and its tendency to break. Crompton became so exasperated with the jenny that in 1772 he decided to improve it. After seven years' work, in 1779 he produced his famous spinning "mule". He built the first one entirely by himself, principally from wood. He adapted rollers similar to those already patented by Arkwright for drawing out the cotton rovings, but it seems that he did not know of Arkwright's invention. The rollers were placed at the back of the mule and paid out the fibres to the spindles, which were mounted on a moving carriage that was drawn away from the rollers as the yarn was paid out. The spindles were rotated to put in twist. At the end of the draw, or shortly before, the rollers were stopped but the spindles continued to rotate. This not only twisted the yarn further, but slightly stretched it and so helped to even out any irregularities; it was this feature that gave the mule yarn extra quality. Then, after the spindles had been turned backwards to unwind the yarn from their tips, they were rotated in the spinning direction again and the yarn was wound on as the carriage was pushed up to the rollers.The mule was a very versatile machine, making it possible to spin almost every type of yarn. In fact, Samuel Crompton was soon producing yarn of a much finer quality than had ever been spun in Bolton, and people attempted to break into Hall-i-th-Wood to see how he produced it. Crompton did not patent his invention, perhaps because it consisted basically of the essential features of the earlier machines of Hargreaves and Arkwright, or perhaps through lack of funds. Under promise of a generous subscription, he disclosed his invention to the spinning industry, but was shabbily treated because most of the promised money was never paid. Crompton's first mule had forty-eight spindles, but it did not long remain in its original form for many people started to make improvements to it. The mule soon became more popular than Arkwright's waterframe because it could spin such fine yarn, which enabled weavers to produce the best muslin cloth, rivalling that woven in India and leading to an enormous expansion in the British cotton-textile industry. Crompton eventually saved enough capital to set up as a manufacturer himself and around 1784 he experimented with an improved carding engine, although he was not successful. In 1800, local manufacturers raised a sum of £500 for him, and eventually in 1812 he received a government grant of £5,000, but this was trifling in relation to the immense financial benefits his invention had conferred on the industry, to say nothing of his expenses. When Crompton was seeking evidence in 1811 to support his claim for financial assistance, he found that there were 4,209,570 mule spindles compared with 155,880 jenny and 310,516 waterframe spindles. He later set up as a bleacher and again as a cotton manufacturer, but only the gift of a small annuity by his friends saved him from dying in total poverty.[br]Further ReadingH.C.Cameron, 1951, Samuel Crompton, Inventor of the Spinning Mule, London (a rather discursive biography).Dobson \& Barlow Ltd, 1927, Samuel Crompton, the Inventor of the Spinning Mule, Bolton.G.J.French, 1859, The Life and Times of Samuel Crompton, Inventor of the Spinning Machine Called the Mule, London.The invention of the mule is fully described in H. Gatling, 1970, The Spinning Mule, Newton Abbot; W.English, 1969, The Textile Industry, London; R.L.Hills, 1970, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester.C.Singer (ed.), 1958, A History of Technology, Vol. IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press (provides a brief account).RLH
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Spinning (textiles) — Spinning is an ancient textile art in which plant, animal or synthetic fibers are twisted together to form yarn (or thread, rope, or cable). For thousands of years, fiber was spun by hand using simple tools, the spindle and distaff. Only in the… … Wikipedia
Spinning frame — The spinning frame was an invention developed during the 18th century British Industrial Revolution. It was later developed into the water frame (patented in 1769), and was used to increase production of textiles in factories.Richard Arkwright… … Wikipedia
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Hargreaves, James — (baptized Jan. 8, 1720, Stanhill, Lancashire, Eng. died April 22, 1778, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire) British inventor of the spinning jenny. A poor, uneducated spinner and weaver, he is said to have conceived the idea for the machine when he… … Universalium
HARGREAVES, JAMES — inventor of the spinning jenny, born at Standhill, near Blackburn; was a poor and illiterate weaver when in 1760 he, in conjunction with Robert Peel, brought out a carding machine; in 1766 he invented the spinning jenny, a machine which has… … The Nuttall Encyclopaedia
Hargreaves — This surname is of Anglo Saxon origin, and is a locational name from any of the various places in Cheshire, Northamptonshire and Suffolk called Hargrave or Hargreave recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Haregrave and Haragraua respectively.… … Surnames reference
Hargreaves, James — (c. 1776) He invented the spinning jenny, a hand operated device to spin cotton faster. Later, water power (and then steam power) would propel the spinning frames to even faster speeds … Historical Dictionary of the Fashion Industry
Hargreaves — Har|greaves, James (1720 78) a British inventor who invented machines such as the spinning jenny, which was used for making cotton and wool into thread, and which he used in his factory in Nottingham … Dictionary of contemporary English
