The Great Inventors of the 18th and 19th Centuries

John Kay was born in 1704, and died in 1780 and his main invention was the flying shuttle.  Before his invention weaving was slow, and laborious, especially on a single hand loom. However the invention of the flying shuttle allowed weavers to weave much more cotton, they ran out of thread before they could be provided with it.  There was two “Shuttle boxes” either side of the loom, these were connected by a wooden track, more commonly known as a “Shuttle race”. The shuttle was propelled by a “Shuttle Peg” which was moved by the weaver moved from side to side.

James Hargreaves was born in around 1720. He had no education, he was a carpenter, but he had a strong interest in engineering. In 1760 he was living in a town with many other weavers, one day his daughter knocked over his spinning wheel, and it gave him the Idea, that maybe he could make a wheel with just one wheel to spin thread.  After this is invented a “Spinning Jenny” a machine that with one wheel could spin eight threads at once, however the threads were coarse. He kept working on this until his death, and by the time he died, the spinning-jenny could spin 80 threads, and was at work all over England.

Samuel Crompton was born in 1753 in England, his most famous invention was the muslin wheel. This later became known as the spinning mule. This invention was driven by steam or water, and was used in factories, which caused the factories to increase in size. Although the invention earned him some money, he raised the money for the invention by playing the violin at the Bolton theatre. He died in 1827, and was buried at his parish church.

Sir Richard Arkwright  was the youngest of thirteen children , he worked with a clock maker called John Kay to make a frame that would be able to spin cotton, however there is a claim that it was not Arkwright, but another inventor that invented the spinning frame, but the other could not make a proper claim because he lacked financial support. The machine worked by using an uneven set of rollers that drew out the roving before twisting it. This created a strong thread that would be suitable for thread for warp, or cloth.

Edmund Cartwright was the inventor of the Power loom; he was born in 1743, and died in 1823. His first power loom was broadcast in 1784, and was patented in 1785. However it is said that this was a useless invention. He did however pick himself up, and in the next year he published a new power loom that was the base for many inventors in the time to come.  He also added parts to various different looms, that no types of loom, including manual and mechanical had ever before had put on them.