1880. The distinguishing feature of this is that the shuttle is not

thrown or impelled as a projectile through the wedge-shaped space (shed), between the two sets of warp threads, but is positively dragged back and forth through the same by an endless belt attached to the shuttle carriage and running first in one direction and then in the other to drag the shuttle through. [Illustration: FIG. 291.--CROMPTON FANCY LOOM.] It is not to be understood that the positive motion loom has superseded the flying shuttle. The latter is still the leading type, of which the Crompton fancy loom, shown in Fig. 291, is a representative illustration. The tendency in late years in the art of weaving has been toward labor-saving devices, a reduction in the cost to the consumer of all kinds of textile fabrics, and the extension of the loom to the weaving of new kinds of materials. Prominent among these are the inventions in the loom for weaving plain fabrics made between the years 1881 and 1895, shown in patents to Northrop, No. 454,810, June 23, 1891; No. 529,943, November 27, 1894, and Draper, No. 536,948, April 2, 1895. This loom, as usual, employs a single shuttle, but as the weft becomes exhausted another bobbin is automatically supplied to the shuttle without stopping the operation of the machine. During the year 1895 the first loom for weaving an open mesh cane fabric having diagonal strands was invented. Patents to Morris, No. 549,930, and to Crompton, No. 550,068, November 19, 1895, were obtained for this. Prior to this time two distinct machines were necessary to produce this fabric, and the operation was slow and expensive. Between 1893 and 1895 two machines were invented, upon either of which the well-known Turkish carpets can be woven. Patents to Youngjohns, No. 510,755, December 12, 1893, and to Reinhart von Seydlitz, No. 533,330, January 29, 1895, disclose this. The drawing of warp threads into the eyes of the heddles and through the reed of a loom requires great skill, and prior to 1880 was performed by hand at great expense. In 1882, however, a machine for doing this was invented, thereby dispensing with the old hand method and cheapening the operation. Patents to Sherman and Ingersoll, No. 255,038, March 14, 1882, and Ingersoll, No. 461,613, October 20, 1891, were granted for this machine. To-day the shuttle flies at the rate of 180 to 250 strokes a minute, and yet the complex organization of the machine works with an energy, a uniformity, an accuracy and a continuity that leaves far behind the strength of the arm, the memory of mind, and the accuracy of the human eye, and yet, if the tiny thread breaks, the whole organization instantly stops and patiently waits the remedial care of its watchful master. _Knitting Machines._--Knitting differs from weaving, braiding, or plaiting in the following respects: In weaving there are longitudinal threads called warp threads, which are crossed on a separate weft or filling thread. In braiding or plaiting all the threads may be considered warp threads, since they are arranged to run longitudinally, and instead of locking around a separate transverse thread at right angles, they extend diagonally and are interwoven with each other. In netting and knitting, however, there is but a single thread, which, in netting, is knotted into itself at definite intervals to leave a mesh of definite size, while in knitting the single thread is merely looped into itself without any definite mesh. Knitted goods have the peculiarity of great elasticity in consequence of this formation of the fabric, and for that reason find a special application in all garments which are required to snugly conform to irregular outlines, such as stockings for the feet, gloves for the hands, and underwear for the body. Weaving, braiding, and netting are very old arts, but the art of knitting is comparatively modern. It is believed to have originated about the year 1500 in Scotland. In 1589 William Lee, of England, is credited with making the first knitting machine. It is said that the girl with whom he was in love, and to whom he was paying his attention, was so busy with her work of hand knitting that she could not give him the requisite attention, and he invented the knitting machine that they might have more time to devote to their love affairs. Another version is that he married the girl and invented the machine to relieve her weary fingers from the work of the knitting needle, and still another is that the machine was the leading object of his affections, to the neglect of his sweetheart, who “gave him the mitten” before he had knitted one on his machines. [Illustration: FIG. 292.--BRANSON 15/16 AUTOMATIC KNITTER.] The earliest circular knitting machine was by Brunel, described in British patent No. 3,993, of 1816. Power was applied to the knitting frame by Bailey in 1831, and the latch needle was patented in the United States by Hibbert, January 9, 1849, No. 6,025. This patent was extended for seven years from January 9, 1863, and covered a very important and universally used feature of the knitting machine. Research has shown, however, that the latch was not broadly new with Hibbert, as it appeared in the French patent to Jeandeau, No. 1,900, of April 25, 1806. Among the earlier knitting machines, the straight reciprocating type was most in evidence, and of which the Lamb machine was a popular form. The increased speed and capacity of the circular machine have, however, caused it to largely supersede the others. In the circular machine a circular series of vertical parallel needles slide in grooves in a cylinder, and are raised and lowered successively by an external rotating cylinder which has on the inner side cams that act upon the needles. The Branson 15/16 Automatic Knitter, shown in Fig. 292, is a good modern illustration. It performs automatically fifteen-sixteenths of the various movements which ordinarily would be performed by hand on a hand machine. Its salient features are covered by patents No. 333,102, December 29, 1885, and No. 519,170, May 1, 1894. About 2,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of knitting and netting, and the value of hosiery and knit goods in the United States in 1890 was $67,241,013. An important branch of the textile art is cloth finishing, whereby the rough surface of the cloth as it comes from the loom is rendered soft and smooth. One method is to raise the nap of the cloth by pulling out the fibre by a multitude of fine points. Originally this was done by combing it with teasles, a sort of dried burr of vegetable growth, having a multitude of fine hook-shaped points. Machines with fine metal card teeth are now largely used for this purpose, and of which the planetary napping machine of Ott, patent No. 344,981, July 6, 1886, is an example. Another method of finishing the cloth is to iron or press it. Plate presses were first used in which smooth plates were folded in alternate layers with the cloth and pressure then applied, but in later years continuous rotary presses have been employed, that of Gessner, patent No. 206,718, August 6, 1878, re-issue No. 9,076, 9,077, February 17, 1880, is one of the earliest examples of a continuous rotary press. The old Gessner presses of Saxony were the pioneers in this field. A modern Gessner cloth press is seen in Fig. 293. [Illustration: FIG. 293.--MODERN “GESSNER” CLOTH PRESSING MACHINE.] In the field of textiles there are many related arts and machines. There are hat felting and finishing machines, darning machines, quilting machines, embroidering machines, processes and apparatus for dyeing and sizing, machines for printing fabrics, machines for making rope and cord, machines for winding and working silk, and in treating the raw material there are cotton-pickers, cotton baling presses, cotton openers and cleaners, flax brakes and hackling machines, feeding devices, wool carding and cleaning apparatus, all in variety and numbers that defy both comment and count. In fabrics every class of fibre has been called into requisition. Flax, wool, silk, and cotton have been supplemented with the fibres of metal, of glass, of cocoanut, pine needles, ramie, wood-pulp, and of many other plants, leaves and grasses. _Artificial silk_ is made out of a chemically prepared composition, and the fibres are spun by processes simulating not only the act of the silkworm, but its product in quality. Vandura silk was spun from an aqueous solution of gelatine by forcing it through a fine capillary tube, but it attained little or no practical value. A far more important artificial silk is covered by the patents to De Chardonnet, No. 394,559, December 18, 1888; No. 460,629, October 6, 1891, and No. 531,158, December 18, 1894, and also in subsequent patents to Lehner and to Turk. These all relate to the manufacture of artificial silk by spinning threads or filaments from pyroxiline (solution of gun cotton), collodion, or some such glutinous solution which evaporates rapidly, leaving a tiny thread, having most of the characteristics of silk and produced by the same method employed by the silk worm when it expresses and draws out its viscid liquid. The De Chardonnet artificial silk took a “Grand Prix” at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and the industry is growing to considerable proportions. Large works are in operation at Besançon, in France, producing 7,000 pounds per week, and it is said that the plant is to be increased to a capacity of 2,000 pounds a day. Similar works at Avon, near Coventry, England, have an equal capacity, and other factories are about to be established in Belgium and Germany. _Polished_ or _diamond cotton_ is a lustrous looking article of a soft silky nature, formed by plating the threads with a liquid emulsion of a waxy and starchy substance, and polishing the threads with rapidly revolving brushes. _Mercerized Cloth._--In late years a distinct novelty has appeared on the shelves of the dry goods stores. Beautiful, filmy fabrics, and lustrous embroidery thread, not of silk, but so close to it in appearance as to be scarcely distinguishable, have gained much popularity and attained a large sale. They are known as _mercerized_ goods. About the middle of the century John Mercer, of England, found that when cotton goods were treated with chemicals (either alkalies or acids), a change was produced in the fibre which caused it to shrink and become thicker, and which imparted also an increased affinity for dyes. He took out British patent No. 13,296, of 1850, for his invention, but practically nothing further was done with the process. Recently the important step of Thomas and Prevost of mercerizing under tension gave some new and wonderful results. United States patents No. 600,826 and No. 600,827, of May 15, 1898, disclose this process. The cloth or thread, while being treated chemically, is at the same time subjected to a powerful tension that causes the fibres (softened and rendered glutinous by the chemicals) to be elongated or pulled out like fibres of molten glass, giving it the same striated texture and fine luster that silk has, and by substantially the same mechanical agency, for it is the elongation of the plastic glutinous thread from the silk worm that gives the thread its silky luster, by a process which has a familiar illustration in the molecular adjustment that imparts luster to spun glass or drawn taffy. Standing in the light of the Twentieth Century, and looking back through past ages, we find the art of spinning and weaving in an ever present and unbroken thread of evidence all along the path of history--through wars and famine, floods and conflagrations; through the progress and decay of nations, through all phases of change, and the vicissitudes of centuries, it has never been relegated to the domain of the lost arts, but has remained a persisting invention. It has been a paramount necessity to the human race, indissolubly locked up with its continuity and welfare, and will ever continue to supply its work in maintaining the greater fabric of human existence.