1775. Arkwright’s spinning machine is shown in Fig. 286, the drawing

rolls being shown at the top of the figure. [Illustration: FIG. 286.--ARKWRIGHT’S ROLL-DRAWING SPINNING MACHINE.] Following these important inventions came the mule spinner. This was invented by Crompton between 1774 and 1779, but was never patented. It combined the leading features of Hargreaves and Arkwright. The spindles were mounted on a wheeled carriage that traveled back and forth a considerable distance from the drawing rolls, which were mounted in bearings in a stationary frame. The long travel of the carriage back and forth, and the simultaneous twisting and drawing of the yarns, produced threads of great fineness and regularity. The value of the long travel of the carriage may be briefly noted as follows: When the threads or slivers emerge from the drawing rolls they are not absolutely of uniform size, and the thick portions do not twist as tightly as the thinner portions. The stretching and drawing of these thicker parts down to a uniform size by the receding of the carriage is the distinctive feature of its action. As the thread has greater tensile strength at the thinner hard-twisted parts than it has at the thicker untwisted parts, it will be seen that the stretching action is localized on the thicker untwisted parts of the thread, which are thus brought down to uniform size by elongation. The drawing and twisting of the thread is effected as the carriage runs out, and when the carriage runs in these twisted lengths are wound around the spindles. The rendering of the action of the mule automatic or self-acting in its travel back and forth was the invention of Richard Roberts, of England, and was covered by him in British patents No. 5,138 of 1825, and No. 5,649 of 1830. The mule spinner shown in Fig. 287 is a good modern example of this machine. [Illustration: FIG. 287.--MULE SPINNING MACHINE.] One of the most important of the early inventions in the textile art was the _cotton gin_. This was the invention of Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, and was patented by him March 14, 1794. Prior to its use the picking of the cotton fibre from the bean-like seed with which it is compactly stored in the boll was entirely effected by hand, and it was a slow and tedious process, and about 4 pounds per day was the average work of one man. The cotton gin, shown in Fig. 288, is a device for doing this by machinery in a rapid, thorough, and expeditious manner. The cotton, mixed with seed, is fed to the roll box J, in which a sort of reel F continually turns the cotton. The bottom of the roll box is formed with a grating of parallel ribs E, between which project the teeth of a gang of circular saws C, which pull the fibre through between the ribs and deliver it to the revolving brush B, which beats the fibre off the teeth of the saws and produces a blast that discharges the fleece through the rear of the gin. The cotton seed, which are too large to pass between the ribs with the fibre, drop out the bottom of the roll-box. With the aid of the cotton gin the efficiency of one man is raised from four pounds per day to several thousand pounds per day, and the culture and manufacture of cotton fibre was revolutionized and greatly stimulated by providing a mode of putting it into merchantable condition at a reasonable price. It is said that the crop of cotton increased from 189,316 pounds in 1791 to 2,000,000,000 pounds in 1859. The cotton gin, as invented by Whitney more than a hundred years ago, is still in use, substantially unchanged in principle, but its efficiency has been raised from 70 pounds per day to several thousands. The cotton crop of the United States for 1899, which was handled by the modern gins at this rate, amounted to 11,274,840 bales, of about 500 pounds each, or more than five thousand million pounds. But for the cotton gin this great staple would have only a very limited use, and one of the greatest of the world’s industries would have practically no existence. [Illustration: FIG. 288.--COTTON GIN.] [Illustration: FIG. 289.--MODERN SPINNING SPINDLE.] A modern step of importance in spinning was the _ring frame_. Ring spinning was invented by John Thorp, of Rhode Island, who took out two patents for the same November 20, 1828. The leading feature of the ring frame is the substitution of a light steel hoop or traveler running upon the upper edge of a ring surrounding the spindle in lieu of the flyer formerly employed. The thread passes through the hoop as it is wound upon the spindle. In modern times ring spinning has attained considerable proportions, especially in cotton manufactures. Nearly 3,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of spinning, and many valuable improvements in the details of construction in spinning machinery have been made in recent years. The most important, perhaps, are those relating to spindle structure, whereby the speed and efficiency of spinning machines have been greatly increased. Prior to 1878 the speed of the average spindle was limited to 5,000 revolutions a minute. In 1878 improvements were made which doubled its working speed and permitted as high as 20,000 revolutions a minute. This result was accomplished by making a yielding bolster. The bolster is an upright sleeve bearing, in which the spindle revolves, and against which is sustained the pull of the band that drives the spindle. By making this bolster or sleeve bearing to yield laterally by means of an elastic packing which surrounds it, a much greater freedom and speed of revolution were obtained. The preliminary step in this direction was made by Birkenhead in patent No. 205,718, July 9, 1878. In the same year this idea was perfected by Rabbeth. The bolster was placed loosely in a bolster case of slightly larger diameter than the bolster, and the bottom of the spindle had a free lateral movement as well as the top, as shown in his patent No. 227,129, May 4, 1880. With such perfect freedom of movement, the spindle at high speed could find its own center of revolution, and an indefinitely high speed and quadrupled efficiency were attained. The Draper Spindle is shown in Fig. 289 as one of the most modern and representative of spinning spindles. Considering the great speed of the modern spindle and the fact that a single workman attends a thousand or more of them, the record of progress in this art becomes impressive. In 1805 there were only 4,500 cotton spindles at work in the United States. In 1899 there were 18,100,000. _Weaving._--A woven fabric consists of threads which run lengthwise, called the “warp,” crossed by threads running transversely, called the “woof,” “weft,” or “filling,” which latter are imprisoned or locked in by the warp. In a simple loom the warp threads are divided into two groups, the threads of one group alternating with those of the other, and means are provided for separating these groups to form a wedge-shaped space between them called a “shed.” Through this shed the shuttle which carries the woof or filling thread is sent crosswise the warp threads. Means are provided for changing the inclination and position of the two groups of warp threads in relation to each other, so as to lock in the filling, and put the warp threads in position to receive the next filling thread. For this purpose the warp threads, usually horizontal, are each passed through a loop, and every alternate loop is attached to a frame called a “heddle.” The intervening loops and threads are attached to another frame or “heddle,” and the two heddles by being worked, one up and the other down, separate the warp threads to form the shed. Formerly the shuttle was thrown by hand through the shed. In 1733 John Kay, of England, took out British patent No. 542, for the flying shuttle and picking stick, by which the shuttle was struck a hammer-like blow and driven like a ball from a bat across the warp, and was struck by a similar stick on the other side, to be returned in the same way. This gave a much more rapid action than could be obtained by hand-throwing, and enabled one weaver to do the work of two or three. In 1760 Robert Kay invented the drop box, by which different shuttles carrying different colors of thread were employed. The _power loom_, however, marked the first great growth in the art of weaving. The enormously increased quantity of cotton spun by Arkwright’s machinery made a demand for increased facilities for weaving it into cloth. Dr. Cartwright, of England, foresaw and met this demand in his _power loom_, in which all of the intricate operations were performed by power-driven machinery. His invention was not extensively introduced until about the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. One difficulty experienced was that the warp threads, from their fuzzy nature, had to be dressed with size, and this required the loom to be stopped from time to time, and necessitated the services of a man to dress or size the warp threads. This difficulty was overcome, however, by Johnson & Radcliffe, about 1803, by the sizing and dressing of the yarns by passing them between rollers and coating them with a thin layer of paste before being put into the loom. Dr. Cartwright was granted British patents No. 1,470, of 1785; No. 1,565, of 1786; No. 1,616, of 1787, and No. 1,676, of 1788, but being unable to maintain any monopoly under his patents he was compensated by Parliament with a grant of £10,000. [Illustration: FIG. 290.--MODERN JACQUARD LOOM.] _Jacquard Loom._--This most notable step in the art of weaving was made at the very beginning of the Nineteenth Century. It enabled all kinds of fabrics, from the finest to the coarsest, to be cheaply woven into patterns having figured or ornamental designs. Jacquard, a native of Lyons, conceived the plan of his great invention in the last decade of the Eighteenth Century, and on December 28, 1801, took out French patent No. 245, on the same. His invention was not, in fact, a new form of loom, but rather an attachment to a loom which was universally applicable to all looms. Before his invention, figured patterns of cloth could only be made by slow and laborious processes. Jacquard’s invention consisted in individualizing and differentiating the movement of the warp threads, instead of operating them in constant groups. This individualizing of the movement of the warp threads allowed any warp thread to be held up automatically any length of time, or let down, according as was necessary to form the figure of the pattern. This was accomplished by making a chain of articulated cards, like a slatted belt, and perforating these cards with varying arrangements of holes. The cards were successively and intermittently fed to a set of needles, which latter, by rising and falling, raise or lower the warp threads attached to the same. By perforating these cards differently, and arranging them so that when one card was brought in front of the needles it would let certain needles through the perforations and hold the others back, it will be seen that each card controlled the action of a different set of needles, and the sequence of the series of cards effected the necessary change in the needles and movement of the warp threads to form the growth of the figure in the fabric. In Fig. 290 is seen a modern form of Jacquard loom, showing at the far end the chain of perforated cards. Jacquard received a bronze medal at the French Exposition in 1801, was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the gratitude of his countrymen was attested by a pension of 6,000 francs, and a statue erected to his memory at Lyons in 1840. Subsequent improvements and developments of the Jacquard loom have carried its work to great nicety and refinement of action. In the chain of pattern cards it is said that as many as 25,000 separately punched cards or plates are sometimes used in weaving a single yard of brocade. The great variety of elaborate designs of delicate tracery in silk, rich patterns in brocades, and gorgeous figures in carpets, attest the value of Jacquard’s important step in this art. Nearly 5,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of weaving. In the early part of the century much notable work was done. Steam was applied to looms by William Horrocks (British patent No. 2,699, 1803). From 1830 to 1842 there were brought out the fancy looms of Crompton, the application of the Jacquard mechanism to the lace frame by Draper, and the carpet looms of Bigelow. In 1853 Bonelli sought to improve on the Jacquard mechanism by employing electro-magnets to effect the selection of the needles, instead of perforated cards (British patent No. 1,892, of 1853). Among more recent developments is the _Positive Motion_ loom of Lyall, patented December 10, 1872, No. 133,868, re-issue No. 9,049, January 20,