The production of a working power-operated loom was a key step in the mechanization of textile manufacture. Although power looms did not come into general use in England until after 1822, Cartwright’s original model paved the way for future refinements, and the basic design remained unchanged until the middle of the twentieth century.
Early in 1785, Edmund Cartwright, an Anglican clergyman with no connection whatsoever to textile manufacture, was dining with some friends at Malden, near the center of the Lancashire cotton industry.
Cartwright returned home to his parsonage in Leicestershire and set to work to prove them wrong. Working with a local blacksmith, he was able to produce a working power-operated loom. The first model, patented in April, 1785, was a cumbersome affair. Worked by means of a hand-crank, it required the strength of two men to operate. Warping and cloth uptake were still done by hand, and machine-spun yarn was not strong enough for the warp threads. Although this first power loom realized no savings in labor
Not long after Cartwright obtained the patent, his wife Alice died, leaving him with six children to support and a substantial inheritance, including two houses in Doncaster, in the center of the Yorkshire wool industry.
Cartwright also set up a cotton mill
Though Cartwright never prospered as a direct result of the invention for which he is best remembered, the remainder of his long life was hardly a failure. In 1809, a consortium of Manchester manufacturers successfully petitioned Parliament to award him a grant of £10,000 for his services to the British nation. With this substantial sum he purchased a farm and devoted the ensuing years to experimental agriculture. He produced several minor inventions related to agricultural machinery. His home became a meeting place for inventors and innovators. He experimented with steam engines and engaged in a lengthy correspondence with the American inventor Robert Fulton,
Cartwright’s original loom was ahead of its time. The art of machining had not progressed to the point where all of the delicate mechanisms required for coordinating the many separate processes that go into weaving could be mass-produced. The invention of the screw-lathe
The introduction of power weaving in Britain was hampered by social as well as technological factors. A burgeoning population, growing export markets, the tremendous expansion of cotton cultivation, and the mechanization of cotton cleaning, combing, and spinning, created thousands of skilled jobs for hand-loom weavers, who served a lengthy apprenticeship and expected to earn (by eighteenth century standards, at least) high wages. Though barred from forming unions and in most constituencies unable to vote, the hand-loom weavers, some 200,000 strong in 1812, constituted a potent political force.
The introduction of power looms potentially signaled a decrease in total employment in the industry and certainly meant that skilled male workers could be replaced by women
Of the many literal and figurative revolutions that convulsed Europe and North America in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution arguably had the most profound effect on the mass of people who experienced it, and it reshaped the political, economic, and social life of subsequent generations. In its earlier stages, it was a revolution primarily of textile manufacture. Cartwright’s power loom played a key role in the process, notwithstanding the slow rate of adoption. Had a working power loom not existed, there would have been little incentive for the refinements that followed.
During the protracted Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815)
Britain’s appetite for raw cotton and search for markets for the finished product helped drive imperial expansion. Supplying the mills of Lowell and Manchester fueled expansion of slavery in the United States, as an institution declining due to economic factors in the 1790’s abruptly became immensely profitable.
The immediate social impact of mechanized weaving was largely negative. Mechanization concentrated the textile industry in large industrial towns plagued by pollution generated by coal-fired steam engines. Machines allowed a child to do the work of an adult, and increasingly it required the combined wages of all of the members of a family, working long hours, to sustain that family at a bare subsistence level. The economic advantages to manufacturers and the nation at large were well established by 1833; it took several more decades before the social costs began to be addressed through legislation and individual business practice.
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Dunwell, Steve. The Run of the Mill. Boston: David R. Godine, 1978. The focus of this illustrated account is the early history of the textile industry in Massachusetts; it contains a thorough account of the mechanical challenges and the various designs of early power looms. -
Mathew, H. C. G., and Brian Harrison, eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. This multivolume set includes detailed biographies of Edmund and John Cartwright and William Radcliffe. It is an invaluable source for biographies of obscure British historical personages. -
O’Brien, Patrick. “The Micro Foundations of Macro Invention: The case of Reverend Edmund Cartwright.” Textile History 28, no. 2 (1997): 201-233. Good for describing the process of invention and the complexities of capitalizing technology in nineteenth century Britain. -
Reid, Robert William. Land of Lost Content: The Luddite Revolt, 1812. London: Heinemann, 1986. Aimed at the general reading public. Describes the social consequences of the mechanization of weaving, and some of the barriers to industrialization.
Tull Invents the Seed Drill
Newcomen Develops the Steam Engine
Darby Invents Coke-Smelting
Kay Invents the Flying Shuttle
Invention of the Spinning Jenny
Watt Develops a More Effective Steam Engine
Invention of the Water Frame
Crompton Invents the Spinning Mule
Slater’s Spinning Mill
Whitney Invents the Cotton Gin
Invention of the Flax Spinner
Sir Richard Arkwright; James Hargreaves; John Kay; Eli Whitney.