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Spinning Mule
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http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCcrompton.htm
Spinning Mule
Samuel Crompton was born on December 3rd, 1753; and died on 1827. He was the son of a small farmer. He was born in Firwood, near Bolton. Crompton was working at various jobs. He finally decided to set out to invent a spinning machine that would improve the Spinning Jenny that had been produced by James Hargreaves. Around 1779 Crompton finally produced his spinning mule, so called because it was a hybrid that combined features of two earlier inventions, the Spinning Jenny and the Water Frame. The mule made a strong, fine and soft yarn, which could be used in all kinds of textiles, but was particularly suited to the production of Muslims.
Since Crompton was too poor to apply for a patent, he sold the rights to a Bolton manufacturer. The first mules were hand-operated and could be used at home. Around the 1790s larger versions were built. Some of them were so large that they could hold 400 spindles. Then there was a guy named David Dale who was smart and quick to see the potential of the mule and bought several for his factory in New Lanark, Scotland.
Cromptons Spinning Mule could be driven by the new steam engines that were being made by James Watt and Matthew Boulton. Large number of factory owners had bought Crompton's mules, but since he had sold the rights for his machine, he made no money from these sales.
Robert Peel was one of those who felt sorry for Crompton in 1812 Parliament granted him
$25,000 which was lost in a business venture. Samuel Crompton died in poverty in Bolton on June 26th, 1827.
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Water Frame
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Richard Arkwright, (1732-1792). In 1762, Arkwright who was a wig-maker from Preston heard about the attempts being made to produce new machines for the textile industry. Arkwright met a guy named John Kay, who was a clockmaker from Warrington. He had been busy for a long time trying to produce a new spinning-machine with another man, Thomas Highs. Kay and Highs finally ran out of money and had been forced to abandon the project.
Arkwright was so impressed by Kay that he offered to employ him to make this new machine. Arkwright also recruited other local craftsman to help, and it did not take long before the team produced the ?Spinning Frame?. Arkwright's machine involved three sets of paired rollers that turned at different speeds. While these rollers produced yarn of the correct thickness, a set of spindles twisted the fibers firmly together. This machine was able to produce a thread that was far stronger than that made by the ?Spinning Jenny? produced by James Hargreaves.
The Spinning Frame was too large to be operated by hand, so Arkwright had to find another way of working his machine. After experimenting with horses, Arkwright decided to use the power of the water wheel. In 1771 he set up a large factory right beside the River Derwent in Cromford, Derbyshire. Arkwright's machine started to be known as the Water Frame.
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Spinning Jenny
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James Hargreaves was born near Blackburn in about 1720. Hargreaves received no formal education and was unable to read or write. He worked as a carpenter and weaver but had a strong interest in engineering.
Hargreaves lived in the village of Standhill in Lancashire. It is claimed that one day his daughter Jenny accidentally knocked over the family spinning wheel. The spindle continued to revolve and it gave Hargreaves the idea that a whole line of spindles could be worked off one wheel.
In 1764 Hargreaves built, which became known as the Spinning Jenny. This machine used eight spindles onto where the thread was spun from a corresponding set of rovings. Now, if you turn a single wheel, the operator could now spin eight threads at once. Later, improvements were made that enabled the number to be increased to eighty. The thread that the machine produced was coarse and lacked strength, making it suitable only for the filling of weft, the threads woven across the warp.
Hargreaves did not apply for a patent for his Spinning Jenny until 1770 and so others copied his ideas without paying him any money at all. When Hargreaves died, it was estimated that, in 1778, over 20,000 Spinning Jenny machines were used in Britain.
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