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Industrialisation in Britain influenced textile production the world over. The first significant developments happened in the late 18th century. In 1733, John Kay patented his ‘Flying Shuttle’, and in about 1764 the ‘Spinning Jenny’ was invented by James Hargreaves.
- The Evolution of The Textile Industry
- Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny
- Arkwright's Water Frame
- Crompton's Spinning Mule
- Cartwright's Power Loom
- Whitney's Cotton Gin
- Roberts' Loom
- Roberts' Self-Acting Mule
- Howe's Sewing Machine
- Consequences: The Luddites
Traditionally, yarn and cloth were bought from spinners and weavers who worked in their own homes or in small workshops. It was common for a family to divide the work, with children washing and then carding the wool, womenspinning the yarn using a manual spinning wheel, and men weaving the cloth using a hand-powered loom. Production was greatly spe...
James Hargreaves (1720-1778) invented the spinning jenny (machine) in Lancashire in 1764 (patented in 1770). The machine – essentially a spinning frame containing multiple spindles – could spin eight cotton threads at the same time, and so the potential to dramatically speed up production and cut labour costs attracted business owners. Hargreaves s...
Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), a Lancashire wigmaker, created the first water frame, a device patented in 1769. Arkwright was crucially assisted by his friend John Kay, a clockmaker (not the flying shuttle inventor) who, over a period of five years, helped him perfect the right materials to use in the machine and the gears that made it work efficie...
Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule in 1779, an improved combination of Hargreaves' jenny and Arkwright's water frame that made finer and more uniform yarn. The machine could measure up to 46 metres (150 ft) in length and massively increased the number of available spindles. A single machine could have 1,320 spindles but was complex and need...
The next development was the power loom weaving machine, invented by Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823) in 1785. Cartwright was a former clergyman, and he was inspired to create the water- and then steam-powered loom after visiting a factory in Derbyshire. The fully automated machine only needed a single worker to change the full spindles every seven mi...
As the methods of the spinners had to keep up with those of the weavers, so, too, those who supplied the raw cotton had to increase their production to meet the booming demand. Eli Whitney (1765-1825) from Massachusetts, USA, moved to a cotton plantation in Georgia where he created a way to efficiently separate the sticky seeds from cotton balls. W...
The first cast-iron loom powered by steam was invented by Richard Roberts (1789-1864) in 1822. Using iron instead of wood (as in Cartwright's loom) meant that the machine did not warp, and so the tension of the yarns was kept constant. There were now much fewer instances of yarns snapping or becoming so loose they got tangled in the machinery. This...
Richard Roberts continued to work on mechanised looms, and he came up with something new in 1825. Roberts' creative spirit was perhaps driven by self-interest since, once again, weaving had leapt forward thanks to his loom and spinning could not keep up and supply the yarns the weavers needed. This limited sales of the Roberts Loom. Roberts created...
Elias Howe (1819-1867) invented a new type of sewing machine in Cambridge in the United States in 1844 (patented in 1846). It was the first machine to use the lockstitch (where there are two threads put in the cloth, one from below and one from above). The lockstitch made textiles much stronger since even if the thread broke the whole line of stitc...
Machines meant textile products were cheaper to buy for everyone, and supply industries like the cotton plantations and coal mines boomed. The increase in the number of factories meant many new jobs were created, albeit largely unskilled work. The populations of citiesand towns like Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, and Halifax increased ten times ...
- Mark Cartwright
Feb 1, 2010 · Buttons were exported from Liverpool to Europe and America, where they were in great demand. But Case lived in the days before corporate automation. Within and from Shaftesbury the industry was devolved to many outworkers, mainly women but also some men and children living in cottages.
The chahut, which began as a rowdy dance for couples in the 1830s and evolved into the cancan by about 1850, may have been one of the reasons little buttons started to be used as an option to hold drawers closed, London usually following the Parisian fashion innovations and trends by about a decade.
It was during the years 1761 to 1850 that these changes happened. Textile factories organized workers' lives much differently from craft production. Handloom weavers worked at their own pace, with their own tools, and within their own cottages.
Jul 22, 2016 · By 1850 the cotton, linen and woollen trades were fully mechanised in England. Hand-spinning had largely died out which prevented industrious families from producing their own textiles to reduce costs.
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This left more ancient communities stranded on the hillsides and taking with it an expanding population of millworkers. In Halifax, steam powered textile factories spread rapidly and by 1850...
