Long Description

Name of Innovation: flying shuttle

Inventor and Year: John Kay, 1733

Use:

In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle, an improvement to looms that enabled weavers to weave faster. The original shuttle contained a bobbin onto which the weft (weaving term for the crossways yarn) yarn was wound. It was normally pushed from one side of the warp (weaving term for the the series of yarns that extended lengthways in a loom) to the other side by hand. Large looms needed two weavers to throw the shuttle. The flying shuttle was thrown by a lever that could be operated by one weaver.

In 1753, his home was attacked by textile workers who were angry that his inventions might take work away from them.

Kay's invention paved the way for mechanical power looms, however, the technology would have to wait another thirty years before a power loom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1787.

Who did it help/hurt? British East India Company merchants, farmers, women, children, people with capital to spend, Indian cotton farmers, Indian hand cotton weavers, factory owners, English hand(loom) weavers (cottage worker), skilled workers (usually men), unskilled workers (female), unskilled workers (male), enslaved Americans.

Name of Innovation: spinning jenny

Inventor and Year: James Hargreaves, 1764

Use:

The spinning of cotton into threads for weaving into cloth had traditionally taken place in the homes of textile workers - known as 'cottage industries'. But the 18th century saw the emergence of the ‘Industrial Revolution’, the great age of steam, canals and factories that changed the face of the British economy forever. James Hargreaves’ ‘Spinning Jenny’, the patent for which is shown here, would revolutionise the process of cotton spinning. The machine used eight spindles onto which the thread was spun, so by turning a single wheel, the operator could now spin eight threads at once. This increased to eighty with improvements in the technology.

New ‘manufactories’ (an early word for 'factory') were a the result of new technologies such as this one. Large industrial buildings usually employed one central source of power to drive a whole network of machines. Richard Arkwright’s cotton factories in Nottingham and Cromford, for example, employed nearly 600 people by the 1770s, including many small children, whose nimble hands made light-work of spinning.

(From the British Library Timelines: Sources for Learning)

Name of Innovation: water frame, first factory

Inventor and Year: Richard Arkwright, 1767

Use:

Richard Arkwright was a barber & wig maker in Bolton, England around 1750 where he learnt that he could make a lot of money if he could invent a machine to spin cotton fibre into yarn, or thread, quickly and easily. He teamed up with a clockmaker called John Kay and by the late 1760's they had a workable machine that could spin four strands of cotton yarn at the same time. Arkwright paid for a patent in 1769 to stop others copying his invention.
This spinning machine spins 96 strands of yarn at once. It was one of many similar machines installed in mills in Derbyshire and Lancashire and powered by waterwheels, so they were called Water Frames. Now it is the only complete machine of its kind in the world. His machines did not need skilled operators so Arkwright paid unskilled women and others to work on them. His spinning mills were the earliest examples of factories where hundreds of workers had to keep pace with the speed of the machines.(Image and text from A History of the World, BBC and the British Museum)

Name of Innovation: spinning mule

Inventor and Year: Samuel Crompton, 1779

Use:

Crompton developed the mule in 1779, so called because it combined two previous spinning machines, the water frame and the spinning jenny. It was capable of producing high quantities of fine, strong cotton yarn, and during the early 1800s revolutionised the British cotton industry, heralding the start of the cotton boom.

The application of the mule to industry massively increased the amount of cotton yarn manufacturers could produce, which in turn increased demand for raw cotton to supply the mills. This led to an increase in cotton production by the slave system, and a parallel boom developed in the plantations of the southern states of America. During the period 1781-1791, the first decade of the mule’s use, the amount of raw cotton supplied to Britain more than tripled.

Despite the success of the mule, Samuel Crompton was unable to patent his design and made very little money from it. He eventually died in poverty in 1827. (Image and text from Revealing Histories, Remembering Slavery, Manchester England)

Name of Innovation: power loom

Inventor and Year: Edward Cartwright, 1784

Use: In 1784, Cartwright visited Richard Arkwright's cotton-spinning mills at Cromford in Derbyshire and was inspired to construct a similar machine for weaving. His idea was scorned by many who thought that such a complicated procedure would be impossible to automate. Undeterred by these comments, and his complete inexperience in the field, he began work. The first power loom, patented in 1785, was extremely crude but improvements were made in subsequent versions. Cartwright now established a factory in Doncaster for his looms, but his ignorance of industry and commerce meant that the factory never became much more than a testing site for new inventions. In 1793, he went bankrupt and closed the factory. A Manchester company purchased 400 of his looms, but the factory was burnt down, probably in an arson attack - many handloom weavers rightly feared the impact power looms would have on their livelihoods. (Text from BBC historic figures)