From early childhood Samuel helped his widowed mother, who supported her only son and her two daughters by keeping a cow or two, by having a good garden, and by spinning and weaving.
Samuel's "little legs became accustomed to the loom almost as soon as they were long enough to touch the treadles. Going to school did not, however, relieve him from a certain amount of spinning and weaving each day.
His mother was in her way loving and kind, but woe unto Samuel if his daily amount of spinning and weaving was not done. Whether or not the eight-spindle jenny used by Samuel was a poor one, much of his time was taken up in "mending the ever-breaking ends of his miserable yarn. Then, too, Samuel was an excellent workman.
It may be that he longed to weave cloth as beautiful and delicate as the muslins of India. At any rate, by the time he was twenty-one years of age, he began to think how a better spinning machine than the jenny could be made.
Most inventors are inspired by the hope that from their inventions they will gain both fame and wealth. From childhood, Crompton had been much alone. Spinning and weaving was not then, as now, done in big factories. He knew very little about the world, and less about how valuable a great invention might be. Crompton worked on the new machine from the time he was twenty-one until he was twenty-six.
He says: "The next five years had this. Though often baffled, I as often renewed the attempt, and at length succeeded to my utmost desire, at the expense of every shilling I had in the world. Strange sounds were heard coming from Crompton's home. Lights were seen at all hours of the night.
The rumor went about that the house was haunted. It was soon discovered that Crompton was the ghost. But when relieved of their fears of a ghost, the neighbors found that they had in their midst a "conjuror," the term of contempt applied to an inventor. So Crompton became an object of suspicion. Hardly was the first mule completed, when the anti-machine riots of broke out. Mobs of spinners and weavers went about crying, "Men, not machines.
The usual number was eighty. Crompton knew that his invention would arouse the rioters even more than the jenny or the water frame. Fearing that they would destroy it, he took it to pieces and hid it in the garret of his workroom. There it lay for weeks, before he had courage to bring it down and put it together. He now learned for the first time what his machine would do. After a little practice, he could spin yarn on it fine enough for the most delicate muslin. His invention is called the mule, because it combines in one machine the best points in Arkwright's water frame and the best points in Hargreaves' spinning jenny.
Before this, the greatest length of yarn ever spun from a pound of cotton was less than 70, yards. With the mule, it was possible to spin, from a single pound of cotton, a thread , yards in length. Crompton's only idea in inventing the mule, as stated before, was to make a machine for his own use.
The way before him now seemed clear, and he married. For a few months he prospered, and he and his wife were happy. But such a valuable invention could not be kept a secret long. Crompton's yarn was the finest that came to the market, and he received the highest price for it.
His neighbors began to ask, "How can Sam Crompton make such fine yarn? He must have a new kind of spinning machine. Crompton, of course, tried to keep them from learning about his invention.
He wanted to be let alone, so that he might reap the fruits of his labor. He even went so far as to put a special lock on his workroom, and to put screens at the windows. But his neighbors were not to be outdone. They called at unexpected times. The most common form of drop spindle used today is known as a hooked top-whorl spindle. This spindle has the whorl located less than half the length of the spindle, with a hook at the top.
This type of drop spindle has been used since the twentieth century BCE in Egypt, where wall paintings depict spinners spinning and plying their yarns on hooked high-whorl spindles. The spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by It later spread to China by , and then spread from the Islamic world to Europe and India by the 13th century.
This wheel, as well as the Indian styles known as charkha wheels, were not rimed wheels at all but rather had a string running through holes in the tips of the spokes connecting them in a zig-zag fashion, thus supporting the drive band. While these rimless spindle wheels were in use in Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Italy and Switzerland, they did not reach Europe until the late 13 th century.
The earliest known record of a flyer wheel appears in the form of a picture from southern Germany, dated from , and shows flax spinning. Other pictures from the Low Countries dating from the early s show small flyer wheels being used to spin wool. Leonardo da Vinci himself even worked on the mechanics of creating a flyer wheel, as evidenced in his notes of , but he did not invent the flyer wheel itself.
Just as with the spindle wheels, these flyer wheels were turned with a hand crank. The treadle wheel, on which a foot treadle automatically fills a bobbin with spun yarn was an even later addition and improvement, but there seems to be little agreement as to their era of origin.
With this development, a spinster could sit to spin as she worked the treadle with one foot, meaning an increase in production. Most modern wheels are a version of the treadle wheel, but great wheels and charkha wheels are still used and available today.
Although the distaff and drop spindle continued to be used widely, during the 14th century the first spinning wheels, also known as muckle wheels were introduced into Britain. However, unlike modern wheels, the muckle was turned by hand. As the wheel was turned, the spinster would step backwards drawing out and twisting the wool as she went.
When the wheel reversed, she would walk forwards as the spun wool was taken in by the spindle. England's leading companies had created enough capital for the industrialization necessary to spin and weave great quantities of fabric cheaply. The industrial revolution really began with a revolution in the way cloth was spun and woven. All of the conditions necessary to change the family and village-based culture and economy into the factory system occurred in the eighteenth century.
In , John Kay invented the fly shuttle loom, which increased weaving speed and thus the need for more yarn. By , James Hargreaves devised the spinning jenny, which could only spin weft yarn. To supply the need for higher-twist warp yarn, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame, and by his mill employed 5, workers. The cotton mule, invented by Samuel Crompton in , required only one worker to watch over 1, spindles. By the s, Edmund Cartwright devised a way to connect the machines to power supplies.
People from villages, which had bred farmers, craftsmen, and merchants for centuries, now flocked to the cities to find work. Home production could no longer compete in speed and price. Some villages were decimated, with only the old, the infirm, and babies left to fend for themselves. Conditions in most of the early textile mills were deplorable. Children as young as five or six worked long hours.
Workers were fined for arriving late, being ill, or breaking any rules. When people could not find work, they turned to drink or begging. During this period, economics was guided by mercantilist philosophy. Mother countries expected their colonies to supply them with raw materials at low prices. They would then manufacture great quantities of goods and sell them to the colonies at high prices. British restrictions on American production and trade were major causes of the American war for independence.
American colonists were forbidden to export textiles. It was illegal to transport yarns or yardage from one colony to another. The British decreed the death penalty for anyone attempting to take plans or information or textile machinery to the colonies. In , Washington commanded his militia to wear hand-spun uniforms, and the Harvard graduating class wore hand-spun suits to protest British restrictions.
During the American Revolution, 13, hand-spun, handwoven coats were made for the Continental Army. During the Civil War, most of the Confederate soldiers wore hand-spun uniforms. The use of cotton in the United States surged forward with Eli Whitney's invention in of the cotton gin, which made cotton the most widely used fiber in America. By , power looms began to be installed in the United States. At that time, 95 percent of American cloth was still being made with hand-spun yarn.
It would be wrong to assume that technological improvements were destined to replace traditional methods all over the world. Hand spinning is still done with all styles of spindles and spinning wheels in many part of Southeast and Central Asia, the Near East, Africa, and Latin America.
In industrially developed countries, hand spinning has become an enjoyable pastime. Excellent spindles, spinning wheels, and looms, and a wide selection of fibers, are available. Many industrialized countries have guilds of spinners and weavers, which meet to share skills and information.
Many art museums have collections of old textiles in which one can see quality that equals or surpasses anything produced by twenty-first century industry. There are excellent art history books in which one can study clothing in paintings of the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Magnificent gilded cut velvets, satins, brocades, and laces are depicted in pictures that were painted on hand-spun, hand-woven canvas.
Montell, Gosta. Spinning Tools and Spinning Methods in Asia. Stockholm: Tryckeri Aktiebolaget Thule, Singer, Charles, E. Holmyard, and A. History of Technology. We may use the provided email to contact you if we have additional questions. See our privacy statement. Skip to main content. Flax Spinning Wheel. Usage conditions apply. International Media Interoperability Framework. IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections.
Visit the IIIF page to learn more. View manifest View in Mirador. Description Spinning is the simple act of drawing out a few fibers and twisting them together to form a yarn.
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