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ABSTRACT
Designing an automatic loom that replenishes weft mechanically without operative intervention challenged the ingenuity of engineers and technologists from the middle of the 19th century until about 1970, when further development ceased in favour of shuttleless alternatives. Although well established in the United States for manufacturing basic cotton fabrics by 1914, and sufficiently well advanced for producing a wide range of fabrics by 1930, the diffusion of the automatic loom in the British cotton industry was sluggish until the 1950s. The reasons are best understood by examining the operational prerequisites, provision of which in Britain was confounded by longstanding rigidities in accounting policy and industrial relations at the level of the firm, and in strategic management at the level of the industry. At the heart of this was the longevity of the traditional non-automatic Lancashire loom, both in design and operation. The article is a counterpoise to the orthodox economic analyses that tend to be dismissive of technological constructs.
Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to Dr Ken Hepworth, Lecturer in Textile Engineering at the University of Leeds, UK, 1960–91, who died in 2020. The authors are grateful to Kevin Coffee, Roger Holden, Eugene Nykolyszyn and Vanessa Wakefield for assistance in locating suitable illustrations, and to Ian Miller for his helpful suggestions.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Behnam Pourdeyhimi, ‘A Study of the Evolution of the Automatic Loom and its Diffusion within the British Cotton Industry’ (PhD thesis, Leeds University, 1982). See also Behnam Pourdeyhimi, Kenneth Jackson and Ken Hepworth, ‘The Development of Weaving Using Automatic Looms’, Ars Textrina 4 (1985): 107–204.
2 John Hearle, ‘The Twentieth Century Revolution in Textile Machines and Processes: Part 1 Spinning and Weaving’, Industrial Archaeology Review 35, no. 2 (2013): 87–99.
3 Weaving terminology: a woven fabric is produced by interlacing warp threads with weft threads at right angles. Warp threads (also called ends) run along the length, and weft threads (also called picks) go across the width of the fabric. The warp threads are supplied from a large, flanged package, a weaver's beam, at the back of the loom, from which they are delivered at the required rate by rotation of the beam. This is referred to as the let-off of warp. The fabric is collected on a roller at the front of the loom and the rate at which it is accumulated determines the spacing of the weft threads. This is referred to as the take-up of fabric. Weft is inserted from a shuttle that carries a package of weft known as a pirn, and this action is called picking. To achieve picking the shuttle is projected alternately between shuttle boxes separated by a race board that supports the shuttle in free flight. During fabric formation the first action is shedding, whereby some warp threads are raised and the others are lowered onto the race board to form an opening known as a shed. Each warp thread has been threaded through a heald in accordance with the particular interlacing required. Shedding is performed by raising and lowering the healds in a sequence controlled by a pre-programmed patterning device called a shedding motion, of which there are three types, cam, dobby and jacquard, in order of sophistication. Shedding is followed by picking, during which the shuttle passes between the raised and lowered warp threads, and then by beat-up as the newly inserted weft is pushed into the fabric, the meeting point being described as the fell of the cloth. Beat-up is accomplished by the reed, which is similar to a comb, except enclosed along both edges. The warp threads pass through the spaces and thereby the reed determines the number of warp threads per unit distance. The reed also supports the back of the shuttle during its traverse. The assembly consisting of shuttle race, shuttle boxes and reed is known as the sley and its oscillation is accomplished by crank action.
4 The earliest registration was P. McFarlane, British Patent (BP) 1,046, 13 April 1857.
5 A.G. Brooks, BPs 10,633, 23 June 1891 and 22,939, 27 November 1894. The Northrop loom in its commercial form was first reported in the UK with technical detail in Textile Recorder, 15 April 1895.
6 James Holmes, Manuscript Notes on Weaving, Third Year (Burnley: John Holmes, c. 1902), pages not numbered. No date given but the Northrop loom was regarded as a novelty, suggesting that it was examined shortly after the setting up of the company in 1902.
7 E. Lees, ‘Reducing Manufacturing Costs: Advantages of Re-wound Weft’, Journal of the National Association of Textile Works Managers' Associations (JNATWMA) 11 (1931/2): 193–7; Pourdeyhimi, Automatic Loom, 52.
8 J. Ramsbottom and R. Holt, BP 6,644, 12 July 1834; W. Kenworthy and J. Bullough, BP 8,790, 14 January 1841; J. Bullough, BP 9,507, 3 November 1842.
9 Both types of weft fork are described and illustrated in Peter Lord and Mansour Mohamed, Weaving: Conversion of Yarn to Fabric (Watford: Merrow, 1973), 235–8.
10 A.H. Owen, BP 12,465, 1 September 1915.
11 British Northrop Loom Co., BPs 125,814, 11 June 1918; 154,446, 26 November 1919; 161,006, 27 June 1920; 261,299, 19 June 1926. See also Lord and Mohamed, Weaving, 239–41.
12 Textile Recorder, 14 September 1912.
13 Textile Manufacturer, 15 January 1915; Textile Recorder, 15 June 1915.
14 Textile Manufacturer, March 1953 and April 1953; Crompton & Knowles, BP 651,348, 2 July 1948.
15 Allan Ormerod and Walter Sondhelm, Weaving: Technology and Operations (Manchester: The Textile Institute, 1995), 196.
16 A.G. Brooks, BPs 10,633, 23 June 1891 and 22, 939, 27 November 1894.
17 British Northrop Loom Co., BP 10,786, 4 May 1911 (an improved version).
18 A.G. Brookes, BP 1,951, 28 January 1896.
19 Crompton & Knowles, BP 503,063, 9 August 1938.
20 Lord and Mohamed, Weaving, 233–5.
21 Lord and Mohamed, Weaving, 224–8.
22 Textile Manufacturer, November 1947.
23 Universal Winding Co., BP 714,841, 13 April 1951; Pourdeyhimi, Automatic Loom, 149–51. Operational details are described in J.B. Aitken, Automatic Weaving (Manchester: Columbine, 1964), 80–3.
24 J.S. Ainley, BP 28,894, 22 December 1911.
25 The maximum reed width is the same as the maximum width of warp at the reed.
26 Ormerod and Sondhelm, Weaving: Technology and Operations, 197.
27 Lord and Mohamed, Weaving, 238.
28 Textile Recorder, December 1958; C.M. Atkinson, Textile Institute and Industry 7, no. 4 (1969): 92.
29 A review of first-generation commercial machines is included in Victor Duxbury and Gordon Wray, eds, Modern Developments in Weaving Machinery (Manchester: Columbine Press, 1962).
30 In the British cotton industry, the terms ‘Lancashire loom’ and ‘non-automatic loom’ were synonymous. For statistical purposes the term ‘ordinary loom’ is also encountered.
31 Herbert Turner, Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy: A Comparative Study of the Cotton Unions (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962), 259.
32 Aitken, Automatic Weaving, 4; Caroline Miles, Lancashire Textiles: A Case Study of Industrial Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and NIESR, 1968), 35–6. See also a detailed cost comparison shown in T. Spencer, ‘More Looms or Automatics?’, JNATWMA 10 (1930/1): 53–61.
33 Board of Trade, Working Party Report: Cotton (London: HMSO, 1946), 8; Miles, Lancashire Textiles, 66–71.
34 For empirical endorsement, see Textile Council, Cotton and Allied Textiles: A Report on Present Performance and Future Prospects, Volume 1 (Manchester: Textile Council, 1969), 68–70.
35 Report of the Cotton Textile Mission to the United States of America (London: HMSO, 1944); Board of Trade, Working Party Report; Textile Council, Present Performance and Future Prospects.
36 For a comprehensive critique, see Kenneth Jackson, ‘The Determinants of the Cotton Weaver's Wage in Britain Between the Wars: Principles, Criticisms, and Case Studies’, Textile History 39, no. 1 (2008): 45–69.
37 Pourdeyhimi, Automatic Loom, 161–72; the Uniform List did not apply in Hyde.
38 Jackson, Textile History 39, no. 1 (2008): 57.
39 Cotton Manufacturing Commission, Interim Report of an Inquiry into Wages, Arrangements and Methods of Organisation of Work in the Cotton Manufacturing Industry (London: HMSO, 1948), also the final report (1949).
40 Edwin Hopwood, A History of the Lancashire Cotton Industry and the Amalgamated Weavers' Association (Manchester: Amalgamated Weavers' Association, 1969), 156–8; L.H.C. Tippett, A Portrait of the Lancashire Textile Industry (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 102.
41 Pourdeyhimi, Automatic Loom, 290–2.
42 The classical mathematical analysis of machine interference with respect to weaving is contained in C. Mack, T. Murphy and N.L. Webb, ‘The Efficiency of N Machines Unidirectionally Patrolled by One Operative when Walking Times and Repair Times are Constant’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, 19, no. 1 (1957): 166–72. An operational version was published in A. Kemp and C. Mack, ‘Tables for Calculating Machine Interference in Automatic Weaving’, Journal of the Textile Institute 52, no. 10 (1961): T471–T476.
43 Douglas Blyth, ‘Investing in New Looms’, Textile Horizons 4, no. 10 (1984): 42–5. See also Douglas Blyth, ‘Plant Replacement in the Woollen Textile Industry’ (M.Phil. thesis, Leeds University, 1972).
44 R. Robson, The Cotton Industry in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1957), 253–6; Tippett, Lancashire Textile Industry, 100–3; John Singleton, Lancashire on the Scrapheap: The Cotton Industry 1945–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 79–87.
45 William Lazonick, ‘The Cotton Industry’, in The Decline of the British Economy, ed. Bernard Elbaum and William Lazonick (London: Oxford University Press, 1986), 18–50.
46 David Jeremy, ‘International Changes in Cotton Manufacturing Productivity, 1830–1950s’, in The Fibre that Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, ed. Douglas Farnie and David Jeremy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 180–1; Lars Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline: A Study in Entrepreneurship, Technology, and International Trade (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974), 91–2.
47 Pourdeyhimi, Automatic Loom, 161–72.
48 Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline, 69, based on US Tariff Board data; Robson, Cotton Industry in Britain, 340.
49 International Labour Office (ILO), The World Textile Industry: Economic and Social Problems, Volume 1 (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1937), 55.
50 Robson, Cotton Industry in Britain, 356.
51 Cotton Board, Survey of the Machinery in the Weaving Section of the Cotton Industry as at 1st September 1948 (Manchester: Cotton Board, 1949), 10.
52 Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline, 68.
53 ILO, World Textile Industry, 54.
54 ILO, World Textile Industry, 186; Geoffrey Owen, The Rise and Fall of Great Companies: Courtaulds and the Reshaping of the Man-made Fibres Industry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 82.
55 See the Quarterly Statistical Review which was published until 1995 by the Cotton Board, the Textile Council, and latterly the Textile Statistics Bureau. The history of British Cotton Industry statistics is discussed in A.C. Wild, ‘The Sources and Nature of Statistical Information in Special Fields of Statistics: Statistics of the Cotton Industry’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, 108, no. 1 (1950): 50–8.
56 Firms could sell rather than scrap, subject to approval, without loss of compensation for the rest of their plant. Miles states that 11,000 new automatic looms were installed under the re-equipment provisions of the Act, but the net increase in the number of automatics shown in the Quarterly Statistical Review during the currency of the Act was only 8,500, suggesting that some automatics were scrapped or exported. See Miles, Lancashire Textiles, 50–65.
57 The other countries were Austria, Italy, Sweden, West Germany and the United States. See R.J. Smith, ‘Shuttleless Looms’, in The Diffusion of New Industrial Processes: An International Study, ed. L. Nabseth and G.F. Ray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 263–7.
58 Merchant converters purchased loom-state fabric from weavers, arranged for dyeing and finishing on commission, and then sold finished fabric into the home or export trade. Thus, they converted loom-state fabric to finished fabric. For fining, see Alan Fowler, Lancashire Cotton Operatives and Work, 1900–1950: A Social History of Lancashire Cotton Operatives in the Twentieth Century (Aldershot: Routledge, 2003), 169–74, and Hopwood, Amalgamated Weavers' Association, 119–22.
59 Oscar Hall, ‘The Coming of the Automatic Loom’, Journal of the Textile Institute 6, no. 11 (1915): 35–50.
60 Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline, 221.
61 J. Starkie, ‘The Weaving of Artificial Silk in the Lancashire Loom’, JNATWMA 8 (1928/9): 217–21; W. Wilkinson, ‘Loom Requirements in Relation to Artificial Silk’, Journal of the Textile Institute 19, no. 11 (1928), P237–49.
62 Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline, 175–206.
63 Textile Manufacturer, 15 April 1932. A more optimistic assessment was offered by British Northrop; see M. Proctor Gregg, ‘Automatic Weaving in Lancashire: A Report on an Important Loom Test’, JNATWMA 11 (1931/2): 251–6. See also John Ryan, ‘Official Report concerning a Test of Automatic Looms etc, made in 1931’, Journal of the Textile Institute 23, no. 3 (1932): P25–42.
64 Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline, 121–30; Robson, Cotton Industry in Britain, 340.
65 Lazonick, Decline of the British Economy, 42–5.
66 Kenneth Jackson, ‘The Room-and-Power System in the Cotton Weaving Industry of North-east Lancashire and West Craven’, Textile History 35, no. 1 (2004): 58–89. For a geographical distribution of looms, see John Worrall, The Cotton Spinners' and Manufacturers Directory for Lancashire (Oldham: Worrall, 1914).
67 Kenneth Jackson, ‘Enterprise in some Working-class Communities: Cotton Manufacturing in North-east Lancashire and West Craven c. 1880 to 1914’, Textile History 37, no. 1 (2006): 52–81.
68 Lancashire and Whitehall: The Diary of Sir Raymond Streat, Volume 1, ed. Marguerite Dupree (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 26, 28.
69 Robson, Cotton Industry in Britain, 124–9.
70 Ibid., 174–5, and Tippett, Lancashire Textile Industry, 98 acknowledged this without describing the mechanism, but it was overlooked by later writers. Richard Lipsey, Introduction to Positive Economics, 4th ed. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 628–30, provides a theoretical insight but recent editions show less interest in inventory cycles.
71 For a contemporary account, see Kenneth Jackson, ‘A Review of Acquisition and Merger in the Lancashire Textile Industry, during the 1960s’, Parts I and II, Textile Institute and Industry 12, no. 10 (1974): 307–11 and 12, no. 12 (1974): 370–5.
72 Lazonick, Decline of the British Economy, 38–9.
73 Owen, Courtaulds, 62–92.
74 Contrast this outcome with the more rational model proposed to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1962. See Allan Ormerod, ‘The Prospects of the British Cotton Industry’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research 15, no. 1 (1963): 3–24.
75 Private communication with Eugene Nykolyszyn, formerly of Bradford Industrial Museum, has confirmed that shamefully few automatic looms appear in the accessions of industrial museums in the UK. A striking contrast is the large working installation of early Draper automatics at the Boott Textile Museum in the National Historical Park at Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. It should be noted that remarkably few photographs of publishable quality appear to have survived. The difficulties which we have encountered in this respect are reflected in the bias towards automatic looms of American origin in selecting illustrations for this article.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kenneth C. Jackson
Kenneth Jackson was a Senior Lecturer in the former Department of Textile Industries at Leeds University, now the School of Design, where he specialised in the economics of the international textile industry, as well as contributing to the teaching of woven textile design. His publications include historical studies of weavers’ wages, entrepreneurship and organisational structures in the British cotton industry.
Behnam Pourdeyhimi
Behnam Pourdeyhimi is William A. Clopman Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean in the Wilson College of Textiles at North Carolina State University. He is also an affiliated professor in the Departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. His previous appointments were at Cornell, the University of Maryland and Georgia Tech. He completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in 1982 and has wide-ranging interests in textiles. Email: [email protected]