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Abstract
In mechanizing spinning, productivity gains arose by enabling multiple threads to be spun at a time. A re-reading of Edmund Cartwright’s original power loom patent of 1785 shows that, contrary to the story he later told, he was seeking to do the same in weaving by weaving multiple webs at one time. This attempt failed and future efforts to mechanize weaving focused on mechanizing the traditional horizontal loom, with productivity increases coming through increasing speeds and enabling one person to manage more than one loom. To achieve this required the solution of a number of non-trivial engineering problems and it was not until around 1860 that the power loom could be used to weave the full range of cloths produced by the Lancashire cotton industry. Key people in this development were William Horrocks of Stockport, Richard Roberts of Manchester and the Blackburn engineers of the 1840s.
Notes
1 Roger N. Holden, Manufacturing the Cloth of the World (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2014).
2 William Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture Commonly Called Power-Loom Weaving (Stockport, 1828).
3 This is quoted in full by Kenneth G. Ponting, Introduction to A Memoir of Edmund Cartwright (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1971), pp. 6–8 (this is a reprint of: M.S. [Margaret Strickland], A Memoir of the Life, Writings, and Mechanical Inventions of Edmund Cartwright, D.D. F.R.S., inventor of the power loom etc., etc. (London, 1843)).
4 See for example the nice smooth curve drawn by von Tunzelmann to show the development of the Cornish engine. G. N. von Tunzelmann, Steam Power and British Industrialization to 1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 259. Review by Donald S. L. Cardwell, Technology and Culture, 21.3 (1980), 497–99.
5 Patrick O’Brien, ‘The Micro Foundations of Macro Invention: The Case of the Reverend Edmund Cartwright’, Textile History, 28.2 (1997), 201–33.
6 Richard Biernacki, ‘Culture and Know-how in the “Satanic Mills”: An Anglo-German Comparison’, Textile History, 33.2 (2002), 219–37; Roger N. Holden, ‘Culture and Know-how in the “Satanic Mills”: A Response’, Textile History, 36.1 (2005), 86–93.
7 Alfred Barlow, The History and Principles of Weaving by Hand and by Power (London, 1878), p. 237.
8 British Patent No. 1470, 4 April 1785.
9 British Patent No. 1565, 30 October 1786.
10 British Patent Nos 1616, 1 August 1787; 1676, 13 November 1788.
11 British Patent No. 962, 12 June 1770. Note that his name is now usually given as ‘Hargreaves’ but the patent gives it as ‘Hargraves’.
12 T. M. Young, The American Cotton Industry (London, 1902), p. 130.
13 Allan Ormerod, An Industrial Odyssey (Manchester: The Textile Institute, 1996), pp. 126–27.
14 Paul Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edn (London, 1928), p. 248. Anthony Cooke, The Rise and Fall of the Scottish Cotton Industry, 1778–1914 — ‘The secret spring’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), p. 115.
15 British Patent No. 2122, 28 June 1796. Note that before 1852 Scotland still had a separate patent system. Stephen van Dulken, British Patents of Invention, 1617–1977: A Guide for Researchers (London: British Library, 1999), pp. 15 and 23.
16 Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London, 1835), p. 231.
17 Abraham Rees, Rees’s Manufacturing Industry (1819–20): A Selection from The Cyclopædia; or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, 5 vols (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972), vol. 5, pp. 381–83 and pl. 1; Richard Guest, A Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture (Manchester, 1823), p. 46. The article in Rees’s Cyclopædia can be dated to 1818 and no doubt Guest took his information from this.
18 Peter Arrowsmith, From Castle to Covered Market: A History of Stockport’s Market Place (Stockport: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, 2010), pp. 63–70.
19 Laurence Ince, The Soho Engine Works 1796–1895 (Bewdley: International Stationary Steam Engine Society, 2000), p. 104.
20 Peter Arrowsmith, Stockport: A History (Stockport: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, 1997), p. 144.
21 British Patent No. 2699, 20 April 1803; No. 2848, 14 May 1805.
22 British Patent No. 2955, 1 August 1806.
23 R. Marks and A. T. C. Robinson, Principles of Weaving (Manchester: The Textile Institute, 1976), pp. 2–3.
24 Baines, p. 234.
25 British Patent No. 3728, 31 July 1813. This does not show the complete loom, but only parts necessary for describing his invention. Note that the frame, which may be of iron, now resembles later power looms rather than the wooden box frame of the hand loom. Note also the wiper arm of the under-pick motion.
26 Brian Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), pp. 35, 45, 50.
27 John J. Mason, ‘A Manufacturing and Bleaching Enterprise during the Industrial Revolution: The Sykeses of Edgeley’, Business History, 23 (1981), 285–307.
28 Guest, p. 46; Baines, pp. 235, 7.
29 Marks and Robinson, pp. 13–16.
30 Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, 2 (London, 1836), 292.
31 British Patent No. 4726, 14 November 1822.
32 William Hanton, Mechanics of Textile Machinery (London, 1924), pp. 134–41.
33 Radcliffe, p. 23.
34 Ibid., pp. 23, 27, 36–38.
35 Ibid., pp. 17–18, 35.
36 Ibid, pp. 27, 36–38.
37 British Patent Nos 2684, 28 February 1803; 2771, 2 June 1804.
38 British Patent Nos 2701, 27 April 1803; 2728, 3 August 1803.
39 Radcliffe, p. 27.
40 Ibid., pp. 36–38.
41 British Patent No. 2869, 19 July 1805.
42 Radcliffe, p. 35.
43 Guest, p. 46.
44 Edwin Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham (Oldham, 1856), pp. 175–76.
45 Ian Haynes, Cotton in Ashton (Ashton-under-Lyne: Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, 1987), pp. 3, 23–24; Ian Haynes, Hyde Cotton Mills (Ashton-under-Lyne: the author, 2002), pp. 7–8.
46 British Patent No. 2876, 9 August 1805.
47 British Patent No. 3023, 23 March 1807.
48 Rees’s Manufacturing Industry, vol. 5, p. 384.
49 Richard L. Hills, Life and Inventions of Richard Roberts 1789–1864 (Ashbourne: Landmark Publishing, 2002), pp. 127–36.
50 Thomas Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain (London, 1886), p. 35.
51 Return of the Number of Power Looms used in Factories, Parliamentary Papers (PP) 1836(24) XLV 145.
52 William Turner, Riot! The Story of the East Lancashire Loom-Breakers in 1826 (Preston: Lancashire County Books, 1992).
53 Mike Rothwell, Industrial Heritage: A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of Blackburn, Part 1: The Textile Industry ([place of publication not stated]: Hyndburn Local History Society, 1985), pp. 17–18.
54 Mike Rothwell, Industrial Heritage: A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of the Ribble Valley ([place of publication not stated]: Bridgestone Press, 1990), p. 6.
55 W. Bennett, The History of Burnley (Part 3 — 1650 to 1850) (Burnley, 1949), p. 286.
56 T. C. Dickinson, Cotton Mills of Preston: The Power Behind the Thread (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2002), p. 12; J. S. Leigh, Preston Cotton Martyrs: The Millworkers who Shocked a Nation (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2008), p. 25.
57 James H. Longworth, The Cotton Mills of Bolton 1780–1985 (Bolton: Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, 1987), p. 29.
58 Owen Ashmore, ed., Historic Industries of Marple and Mellor, 2nd edn (Stockport: Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, Leisure Services Department, 1989), pp. 26–27.
59 Hills, p. 128.
60 Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures (London, 1835), pp. 38–39.
61 Hills, pp. 17–18.
62 Ibid., pp. 123–26.
63 British Patent No. 4726, 14 November 1822.
64 Richard Marsden, Cotton Weaving: Its Development, Principles and Practice (London, 1895), p. 180.
65 Baines, between pp. 234–35 and opposite p. 239.
66 Ibid., pl. 12.
67 Ure, Cotton Manufacture, pl. 105.
68 Returns of the Number of Cotton, Woollen, Worsted, Flax and Silk Factories, Parliamentary Papers (PP) 1850 (745) XLII 455.
69 Geoffrey Timmins, The Last Shift: The Decline of Handloom Weaving in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 37 and 109.
70 Return of the Number of Power Looms used in Factories, PP 1836 (24) XLV 145. Note that only the returns by J. Heathcote (covering the parishes of Manchester, Salford, Middleton, Eccles, Bury, Whalley, Rochdale, Chorley, Leyland, Blackburn, Preston, Wigan, Lancaster, Prestwich, Radcliffe, Bolton and Deane) give this detail on the types of cloth being woven.
71 Marsden, p. 95.
72 British Patent Nos 6619, 27 May 1834; 6900, 1 October 1835; 8790, 14 January 1841; 9507, 3 November 1842; 10,428, 12 December 1844; 11,462, 1 December 1846; 12,267, 11 September 1848; 12,449, 31 January 1849; 13,693, 17 July 1851.
73 Marsden, p. 98.
74 Timmins, pp. 149, 157.
75 Thomas Roberts, Tappet and Dobby Looms: Their Mechanism and Management (Manchester, 1926), pp. 108–09 (pls 29 and 30).
76 Barlow, pp. 261–64.
77 Thomas W. Fox, The Mechanism of Weaving, 5th edn (London, 1922), p. 488.
78 Marks and Robinson, pp. 190–92.
79 Marsden, p. 169 (pl. 114).
80 Timmins, pp. 1–13.
81 Fox, p. 489 (pl. 247).
82 Timmins, p. 158.
83 J. J. Vincent, Shuttleless Looms (Manchester: The Textile Institute, 1980), p. 126. It should be noted that the Spool Axminster carpet loom developed in the 1870s used what were called ‘needles’, which were similar to modern rapiers, to insert the backing weft.
84 John W. S. Hearle, ‘The 20th-Century Revolution in Textile Machines and Processes. Part 1: Spinning and Weaving’, Industrial Archaeology Review, 35.2 (2013), 87–99.