Why the industrial revolution was British: the case of spinning machinery
The Spinning wheel
• Device for spinning thread or yarn from fibres.
• It was invented in India, between 500 and 1000, used in China and the Islamic world since the 11century but known
in Europe only by the 14century
• The earliest clear illustrations come from Baghdad (1237) and China (Northern Song Dynasty, 960-1127)
• It consisted of a vertical wheel, a horizontal spindle that was parallel to the axle of the wheel, and a string that acted as a belt so the turning wheel rotated the spindle.
• The two fundamental operations in spinning were drawing and twisting the roving (a cleaned and carded loose strand of cotton)
• The spinning wheel replaced the earlier method of hand spinning with a spindle
• It speed up production, as one needn’t stop spinning to wind up the yarn.
• It was good at creating long drawn soft fuzzy wools, but very difficult to produce the strong smooth yarns needed to create warp for weaving.
The story of “a very ordinary man”: the invention of the Spinning-Jenny
James Hargreaves was one of many weavers born (in 1721) in the cotton district of Lancashire who owned a spinning wheel and a loom (Aspin and Chapman 1964).
One day his daughter Jenny accidentally knocked over the family spinning wheel and the spindle continued to revolve.
This episode gave Hargreaves the idea that a whole line of spindles could be worked off one wheel...probably a legend but...
In 1764 he built what became to know the Spinning- Jenny.
The machine used 8 vertical spindles onto which the thread was spun from a corresponding set of rovings. By turning a single wheel, the spinner could spin 8 threads at once.
However, the thread broke easily when woven.
• Hargreaves made the machine for family use
• Others began to make improvements to the jenny and the number of threads was increased from 8
up to 120 (24-spindle model became standard).
• He died in 1778, and by that time over 20.000 Spinning-Jenny were used in Britain and quickly
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