Textiles

A textile is any kind of woven, knitted, knotted (as in macrame) or tufted cloth (fabric), or a non-woven cloth made of fibers that have been bonded into a fabric, e.g. felt.   Textile also refers to the yarns, threads and wools that can be spun, woven, tufted, tied and otherwise used to manufacture cloth.   Many textiles have been used since ancient times, while others use artificial fibers made from plastics that are recent inventions. ^{Wiki n.p.}

There are many animal (sheep, camel, silkworm, alpaca, rabbit, etc.) and plant (cotton, flax, jute, bark, etc.) sources for textile fibers, but wool from sheep and cotton from the cotton plant are the most important in their effects on living standards.   Linen, made from flax, was important in early America because flax (linseed) could be grown on a farm easily, but it has since been superseded mostly by synthetic yarns made from plastics.   Wool and cotton textiles are also made into other articles that give warmth, viz., carpets, bedsheets, pillowcases, towels, bags, etc.

Like all textile fibers, wool and cotton require cleaning, carding, fulling, spinning, dyeing, and weaving.   Cleaning means removing dirt and grease from the fibers.   Carding means combing the fibers to straighten them out.   Fulling means beating or pressing the fibers to increase their weight and bulk.   Spinning winds ("spins") the individual fibers into thread, called yarn.   Dyeing, if desired, colors the fibers.   Weaving interlaces the yarn into cloth.   When performed manually, all of these operations involve considerable labor and cost.   Therefore, much effort and ingenuity was spent developing machinery that would reduce the labor content of cloth production.

To 1790

The distaff and spindle method is an ancient way to spin linen, silk, cotton, and wool fibers.   It was also used to limited extent in early America.   The distaff with the unspun thread is held in one hand and the spindle, held vertically under the force of gravity and a weight (stone or metal whorl), is rotated with the other hand to spin the thread.   The distaff method was followed by the hand-rotated spinning wheel, invented somewhere in Asia and spread from Asia to Europe in the 13th century.   By 1298, Europeans began using a spinning wheel with a foot treadle in 1298.   They are thought to have copied this invention from its version used in India.   The spinner turned the wheel with one hand, and drew out the thread with the other until (usually) her arm was fully extended.   Then she stopped the wheel and wound the finished thread onto the spindle.   It was a more efficient and productive method than the distaff method.   An improvement in productivity was again made with a foot treadle, which rotated the wheel and freed one hand, so that both hands could be applied to the spinning process to again improve quality, efficiency and productivity.

An ancient method of weaving was to place spun thread onto a vertical hand loom.   This method was also used by Amerindians.   The warp threads were weighted with stone or clay or metal loomweights.   The woof threads are led across the warp by hand, in and out, to produce the fabric.   Further improvements in the loom resulted in making it a horizontal structure so that the weaver could operate the machine while sitting.

William Lee, an English clergyman, invented the first knitting machine, called a stocking frame, in 1589.

In 1643, a small woolen carding and fulling mill was started in Rowley, MA. ^{Carruth 17}

Textile production was performed at or near the home (thus the name, "cottage industry") until 1717 in England.   In that year, in Derby, two brothers, Thomas and John Lombe, used spinning machines in a water-driven factory to produce silk yarn.

Before the invention of the flying shuttle, it was only possible for cloth to be woven up to a maximum of the width of a man's reach.   (Looms were too strenous to operate by most women.)   The weaver had to pass the shuttle that held woof thread backwards and forwards, from hand to hand.   Usually, one weaver operated the machinery while the other weaver passed the shuttle back and forth.   In 1733, a British machinist, John Kay, invented and patented the flying shuttle.   In this machine, the warp threads were separated automatically so that the shuttle would pass in and out between them.   The weaver would pull a cord to the left that activated a driver that sent the shuttle flying across the loom.   The cord was then pulled to the right and the shuttle would move to the right.   He was granted a patent in the same year for his New Engine of Machine for Opening and Dressing Wool that used the flying shuttle.   From this time on, much wider widths of cloth could be woven by a single machine, thus increases its productivity.   In fact, the invention was so successful that it put weavers out of work (one weaver needed instead of two), prompting them to destroy his looms in 1753.   Other weavers ignored Kay's patents and built their own shuttles, so he made no money on them.

Up until the 1760s, the woolen textile industry was the staple industry of England and cotton textile manufacture was insignificant.   The fly-shuttle began to be used in cotton textiles in the 1760s when that industry became more significant, but its exports were still only 1/12 of wool exports in 1764.   The entire textile manufcaturing process was located in homes or nearby outbuildings, and therefore called "The Domestic System", in contrast to its eventual replacement by the "The Factory System" where workers traveled to common buildings for textile manufacture.

In 1764, the English inventor, Richard Arkwright, of Preston, Lancashire (England) invented the spinning frame that produced cotton threads hard enough to be used in textile manufacturing.   Using this machine, unskilled workers could produce much more thread than hand spinners. ^{Asimov 240}

In 1764, Hargreaves, an Englishman, invented the spinning-jenny.

In 1768, a mob of angry weavers destroyed Arkwright's mill at Chorely.

In 1769, Arkwright was awarded a patent for the Water Frame.

In 1770, Hargreaves was awarded a patent for the Spinning Jenny.

Cotton spinning using an Arkwright waterframe in a water wheel powered mill with spinners located in a factory first occured in 1771 at Cromford, Derbyshire, England, under the direction of Richard Arkwright.   Cotton, which was in the 1760s just becoming a major manufacturing industry (wool was predominant) had a wider market than silk, so the cotton mill was a more profitable application than the Lombe silk spinning mill.

In 1779, Crompton invented the Spinning Mule.

Richard Arkwright started a steam engine, cotton-spinning mill at Shudehill, Manchester, England, in 1783.   This was the first case of cotton spinning in a factory using steam engine power.

In 1785, Cartwright patented the Power Loom.

1790-1799

On December 21, 1790, at Pawtucket, RI, Samuel Slater began cotton carding and spinning using machinery design and operation that he memorized from his work in England.   He divided the process into simple tasks that could be performed by children (child labor was common in those days), whose families live and work on nearby farms. ^{Schles 158}   The power to drive the mill machinery was provided by a water wheel.   This feat began the transfer of the British Industrial Revolution to the United States.

In 1791, carpet manufacture of Turkish and Axminster carpets began in Philadelphia by William Peter Sprague. ^{Carruth 109}

1800-1809

In 1804, the French inventor, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, invented what would later be called the Jacquard loom.   It mechanized the laborious process of weaving patterns, which had been done manually in a machine.   Needles moved through holes set in wood.   The Jacquard loom used metal cards with holes between the needles and the wood holes that matched a desired pattern.   Where the metal and wood holes matched, the needles passed through; otherwise, the needles were stopped.   Thus, much hand labor was saved in weaving patterns, and productivity of pattern weaving increased greatly.   This principle of ON-OFF power control of machinery was later applied to the digital computer. ^{Asimov 282}

1810-1819

In 1813, Horrocks invented the speed batton.

In 1814, Francis Cabot Lowell begins the first factory with water-powered cotton spinning and weaving machinery in the same building in Waltham, MA.   He invented an improved power loom after secretly observing similar machinery in England.   His associates later begin textile manufacturing in Lowell, MA, on a larger scale. ^{Schles 201}

1820-1829

1830-1839

In 1830, a woolen mill based on the Waltham, MA, system, began production in Lowell, MA. ^{Schles 223}

In 1831, Timothy Bailey of Cohoes, NY, invented a powered knitting machine that he put into production in 1832 under the company name, Bailey and Egbert Egberts. ^{Carruth 185}

In 1839, Erastus Bigelow, an American, invented a loom to weave two-ply ingrain carpets. ^{Schles 239}

1840-1849