History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain: with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe ... and a view of the present state of the manufacture / By Edward Baines, jun.

  • Baines, Edward, Sir, 1800-1890.
Date:
[1835]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain: with a notice of its early history in the East, and in all the quarters of the globe ... and a view of the present state of the manufacture / By Edward Baines, jun. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    161/606 (page 139)
    to the rollers, consequent upon Paul’s improvement in the carding process, hereafter to be described. The specification of the patent of 1758* contains the following general description of the process:— “ The wooll or cotton to be spun by the said machine or engine must be first carded upon a card made up of a number of parallel cards, with intervening spaces between each; and the matter so carded must be taken off each card separately. The several rowes or fillaments so taken off must be connected into one entire roll, which, being put between a pair of rollers or cylinders, is by their turning round delivered to the nose of a spindle, in such proportion to the thread made as is proper for the particular occasions. From hence it is delivered to a bobbin, spole, or quill, which turns upon the spindle, and which gathers up the thread or yarn as it is spun. The spindle is so contrived as to draw faster than the rollers or cylinders give, in proportion to the length of thread or yarn into which the matter to be spun is proposed to be drawn.” The annexed plate, (PI.2.) which contains two views of the machine, taken from the drawings accompanying the specification, will assist the reader to form an idea of its construction. It will be observed, that the machine contains only one pair of rollers; the patent of 1738 expressly describes two pairs, the second moving faster than the first; but it adds that in some cases only the first pair of rollers was used. In the second patent, the upper roller was called the “ riband cylinder,” from the sliver, or carding, being wound upon it by means of a riband: as the cylinder turned, the sliver came off, was compressed between the two cylinders, and then, being * In this specification, the patentee is styled “ Lewis Paul, of Kensington Gravel Pitts, in the county of Middlesex, Esquire.” One of the witnesses is Mr. Thomas Yeo; probably the same gentleman into whose hands Mr. Charles Wyatt states that the work at Northampton passed about the year 1764.