Far back in the obscuring gloom of a prehistoric antiquity, man wore probably only the hirsute covering which nature gave him. As he emerged from barbarism, sentiments of modesty marked the evolution of his mind, and this, together with the need for a more sufficient protection against cold and heat, suggested an artificial covering for his body. At first he robbed the brute of his fleecy skin and wore it bodily. Later he learned to spin and weave; next to food and drink, clothing became a fundamental necessity, for without it his life could not extend outside of the limited zone of the tropics. Food and drink were to be found as nature’s free gifts, but clothing had to be made, and its manufacture constituted probably the oldest of all the living arts. The making of cloth may be said to be coeval with history. The Old Testament of the Bible is replete with references to spinning and weaving, and the cloths wrapped about the mummies of ancient Egypt, although thousands of years old, were of exceeding regularity and fineness.

So old an art, and so great and continuous a need for its products necessarily must have resulted in much development and progress. When the Nineteenth Century began, the world already enjoyed the results of Hargreaves’ spinning-jenny, Arkwright’s roll-drawing spinning machine, the mule spinner, the cotton gin, and the power loom, all of which were most radical inventions, equaling in importance, perhaps, any that have followed.Prior to the invention of the spinning-jenny, the loose fibre was spun into yarns and thread by hand on the old-fashioned spinning wheel, each thread requiring the attention of one person. In 1763 Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny (see Fig. 285), in which a multiplicity of spindles was employed, whereby one person could attend to the making of many threads simultaneously. For this purpose the spindles were set upright at the end of the frame, and the rovings or strips of untwisted fibre were carried on bobbins on the inclined frame. The rovings extended from these bobbins to a reciprocating “clasp” held in the left hand of the workman, and thence extended to the spindles at the end of the frame. The workman drew out the rovings by moving the clasp back and forth, and at the same time turned the crank with his right hand to rotate the spindles. Hargreaves’ machine is shown and described in his British patent, No. 962 of 1770.

The next important step in spinning was the introduction of drawing rolls, which were a series of rolls running at different speeds for drawing out or elongating the roving as it was spun into a thread. This was mainly due to Arkwright, a contemporary of Hargreaves. The principle of the drawing rolls had been foreshadowed in the British patents of Louis Paul, No. 562, of 1738, and No. 724, of 1758, but Arkwright made the first embodiment of it in practically useful machines, which were covered by him in British patents No. 931, of 1769, and No. 1,111, of 1775. Arkwright’s spinning machine is shown in Fig. 286, the drawing rolls being shown at the top of the figure.

Following these important inventions came the mule spinner. This was invented by Crompton between 1774 and 1779, but was never patented. It combined the leading features of Hargreaves and Arkwright. The spindles were mounted on a wheeled carriage that traveled back and forth a considerable distance from the drawing rolls, which were mounted in bearings in a stationary frame. The long travel of the carriage back and forth, and the simultaneous twisting and drawing of the yarns, produced threads of great fineness and regularity. The value of the long travel of the carriage may be briefly noted as follows: When the threads or slivers emerge from the drawing rolls they are not absolutely of uniform size, and the thick portions do not twist as tightly as the thinner portions. The stretching and drawing of these thicker parts down to a uniform size by the receding of the carriage is the distinctive feature of its action. As the thread has greater tensile strength at the thinner hard-twisted parts than it has at the thicker untwisted parts, it will be seen that the stretching action is localized on the thicker untwisted parts of the thread, which are thus brought down to uniform size by elongation. The drawing and twisting of the thread is effected as the carriage runs out, and when the carriage runs in these twisted lengths are wound around the spindles. The rendering of the action of the mule automatic or self-acting in its travel back and forth was the invention of Richard Roberts, of England, and was covered by him in British patents No. 5,138 of 1825, and No. 5,649 of 1830. The mule spinner shown in Fig. 287 is a good modern example of this machine.

One of the most important of the early inventions in the textile art was the cotton gin. This was the invention of Eli Whitney, of Massachusetts, and was patented by him March 14, 1794. Prior to its use the picking of the cotton fibre from the bean-like seed with which it is compactly stored in the boll was entirely effected by hand, and it was a slow and tedious process, and about 4 pounds per day was the average work of one man. The cotton gin, shown in Fig. 288, is a device for doing this by machinery in a rapid, thorough, and expeditious manner. The cotton, mixed with seed, is fed to the roll box J, in which a sort of reel F continually turns the cotton. The bottom of the roll box is formed with a grating of parallel ribs E, between which project the teeth of a gang of circular saws C, which pull the fibre through between the ribs and deliver it to the revolving brush B, which beats the fibre off the teeth of the saws and produces a blast that discharges the fleece through the rear of the gin. The cotton seed, which are too large to pass between the ribs with the fibre, drop out the bottom of the roll-box. With the aid of the cotton gin the efficiency of one man is raised from four pounds per day to several thousand pounds per day, and the culture and manufacture of cotton fibre was revolutionized and greatly stimulated by providing a mode of putting it into merchantable condition at a reasonable price. It is said that the crop of cotton increased from 189,316 pounds in 1791 to 2,000,000,000 pounds in 1859. The cotton gin, as invented by Whitney more than a hundred years ago, is still in use, substantially unchanged in principle, but its efficiency has been raised from 70 pounds per day to several thousands. The cotton crop of the United States for 1899, which was handled by the modern gins at this rate, amounted to 11,274,840 bales, of about 500 pounds each, or more than five thousand million pounds. But for the cotton gin this great staple would have only a very limited use, and one of the greatest of the world’s industries would have practically no existence.

A modern step of importance in spinning was the ring frame. Ring spinning was invented by John Thorp, of Rhode Island, who took out two patents for the same November 20, 1828. The leading feature of the ring frame is the substitution of a light steel hoop or traveler running upon the upper edge of a ring surrounding the spindle in lieu of the flyer formerly employed. The thread passes through the hoop as it is wound upon the spindle. In modern times ring spinning has attained considerable proportions, especially in cotton manufactures.Nearly 3,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of spinning, and many valuable improvements in the details of construction in spinning machinery have been made in recent years. The most important, perhaps, are those relating to spindle structure, whereby the speed and efficiency of spinning machines have been greatly increased. Prior to 1878 the speed of the average spindle was limited to 5,000 revolutions a minute. In 1878 improvements were made which doubled its working speed and permitted as high as 20,000 revolutions a minute. This result was accomplished by making a yielding bolster. The bolster is an upright sleeve bearing, in which the spindle revolves, and against which is sustained the pull of the band that drives the spindle. By making this bolster or sleeve bearing to yield laterally by means of an elastic packing which surrounds it, a much greater freedom and speed of revolution were obtained. The preliminary step in this direction was made by Birkenhead in patent No. 205,718, July 9, 1878. In the same year this idea was perfected by Rabbeth. The bolster was placed loosely in a bolster case of slightly larger diameter than the bolster, and the bottom of the spindle had a free lateral movement as well as the top, as shown in his patent No. 227,129, May 4, 1880. With such perfect freedom of movement, the spindle at high speed could find its own center of revolution, and an indefinitely high speed and quadrupled efficiency were attained. The Draper Spindle is shown in Fig. 289 as one of the most modern and representative of spinning spindles. Considering the great speed of the modern spindle and the fact that a single workman attends a thousand or more of them, the record of progress in this art becomes impressive. In 1805 there were only 4,500 cotton spindles at work in the United States. In 1899 there were 18,100,000.Weaving.—A woven fabric consists of threads which run lengthwise, called the “warp,” crossed by threads running transversely, called the “woof,” “weft,” or “filling,” which latter are imprisoned or locked in by the warp. In a simple loom the warp threads are divided into two groups, the threads of one group alternating with those of the other, and means are provided for separating these groups to form a wedge-shaped space between them called a “shed.” Through this shed the shuttle which carries the woof or filling thread is sent crosswise the warp threads. Means are provided for changing the inclination and position of the two groups of warp threads in relation to each other, so as to lock in the filling, and put the warp threads in position to receive the next filling thread. For this purpose the warp threads, usually horizontal, are each passed through a loop, and every alternate loop is attached to a frame called a “heddle.” The intervening loops and threads are attached to another frame or “heddle,” and the two heddles by being worked, one up and the other down, separate the warp threads to form the shed. Formerly the shuttle was thrown by hand through the shed. In 1733 John Kay, of England, took out British patent No. 542, for the flying shuttle and picking stick, by which the shuttle was struck a hammer-like blow and driven like a ball from a bat across the warp, and was struck by a similar stick on the other side, to be returned in the same way. This gave a much more rapid action than could be obtained by hand-throwing, and enabled one weaver to do the work of two or three. In 1760 Robert Kay invented the drop box, by which different shuttles carrying different colors of thread were employed.The power loom, however, marked the first great growth in the art of weaving. The enormously increased quantity of cotton spun by Arkwright’s machinery made a demand for increased facilities for weaving it into cloth. Dr. Cartwright, of England, foresaw and met this demand in his power loom, in which all of the intricate operations were performed by power-driven machinery. His invention was not extensively introduced until about the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. One difficulty experienced was that the warp threads, from their fuzzy nature, had to be dressed with size, and this required the loom to be stopped from time to time, and necessitated the services of a man to dress or size the warp threads. This difficulty was overcome, however, by Johnson & Radcliffe, about 1803, by the sizing and dressing of the yarns by passing them between rollers and coating them with a thin layer of paste before being put into the loom. Dr. Cartwright was granted British patents No. 1,470, of 1785; No. 1,565, of 1786; No. 1,616, of 1787, and No. 1,676, of 1788, but being unable to maintain any monopoly under his patents he was compensated by Parliament with a grant of £10,000.

Jacquard Loom.—This most notable step in the art of weaving was made at the very beginning of the Nineteenth Century. It enabled all kinds of fabrics, from the finest to the coarsest, to be cheaply woven into patterns having figured or ornamental designs. Jacquard, a native of Lyons, conceived the plan of his great invention in the last decade of the Eighteenth Century, and on December 28, 1801, took out French patent No. 245, on the same. His invention was not, in fact, a new form of loom, but rather an attachment to a loom which was universally applicable to all looms. Before his invention, figured patterns of cloth could only be made by slow and laborious processes. Jacquard’s invention consisted in individualizing and differentiating the movement of the warp threads, instead of operating them in constant groups. This individualizing of the movement of the warp threads allowed any warp thread to be held up automatically any length of time, or let down, according as was necessary to form the figure of the pattern. This was accomplished by making a chain of articulated cards, like a slatted belt, and perforating these cards with varying arrangements of holes. The cards were successively and intermittently fed to a set of needles, which latter, by rising and falling, raise or lower the warp threads attached to the same. By perforating these cards differently, and arranging them so that when one card was brought in front of the needles it would let certain needles through the perforations and hold the others back, it will be seen that each card controlled the action of a different set of needles, and the sequence of the series of cards effected the necessary change in the needles and movement of the warp threads to form the growth of the figure in the fabric.

In Fig. 290 is seen a modern form of Jacquard loom, showing at the far end the chain of perforated cards. Jacquard received a bronze medal at the French Exposition in 1801, was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the gratitude of his countrymen was attested by a pension of 6,000 francs, and a statue erected to his memory at Lyons in 1840.

Subsequent improvements and developments of the Jacquard loom have carried its work to great nicety and refinement of action. In the chain of pattern cards it is said that as many as 25,000 separately punched cards or plates are sometimes used in weaving a single yard of brocade. The great variety of elaborate designs of delicate tracery in silk, rich patterns in brocades, and gorgeous figures in carpets, attest the value of Jacquard’s important step in this art.Nearly 5,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of weaving. In the early part of the century much notable work was done. Steam was applied to looms by William Horrocks (British patent No. 2,699, 1803). From 1830 to 1842 there were brought out the fancy looms of Crompton, the application of the Jacquard mechanism to the lace frame by Draper, and the carpet looms of Bigelow. In 1853 Bonelli sought to improve on the Jacquard mechanism by employing electro-magnets to effect the selection of the needles, instead of perforated cards (British patent No. 1,892, of 1853).Among more recent developments is the Positive Motion loom of Lyall, patented December 10, 1872, No. 133,868, re-issue No. 9,049, January 20, 1880. The distinguishing feature of this is that the shuttle is not thrown or impelled as a projectile through the wedge-shaped space (shed), between the two sets of warp threads, but is positively dragged back and forth through the same by an endless belt attached to the shuttle carriage and running first in one direction and then in the other to drag the shuttle through.

It is not to be understood that the positive motion loom has superseded the flying shuttle. The latter is still the leading type, of which the Crompton fancy loom, shown in Fig. 291, is a representative illustration.

The tendency in late years in the art of weaving has been toward labor-saving devices, a reduction in the cost to the consumer of all kinds of textile fabrics, and the extension of the loom to the weaving of new kinds of materials. Prominent among these are the inventions in the loom for weaving plain fabrics made between the years 1881 and 1895, shown in patents to Northrop, No. 454,810, June 23, 1891; No. 529,943, November 27, 1894, and Draper, No. 536,948, April 2, 1895. This loom, as usual, employs a single shuttle, but as the weft becomes exhausted another bobbin is automatically supplied to the shuttle without stopping the operation of the machine. During the year 1895 the first loom for weaving an open mesh cane fabric having diagonal strands was invented. Patents to Morris, No. 549,930, and to Crompton, No. 550,068, November 19, 1895, were obtained for this. Prior to this time two distinct machines were necessary to produce this fabric, and the operation was slow and expensive. Between 1893 and 1895 two machines were invented, upon either of which the well-known Turkish carpets can be woven. Patents to Youngjohns, No. 510,755, December 12, 1893, and to Reinhart von Seydlitz, No. 533,330, January 29, 1895, disclose this. The drawing of warp threads into the eyes of the heddles and through the reed of a loom requires great skill, and prior to 1880 was performed by hand at great expense. In 1882, however, a machine for doing this was invented, thereby dispensing with the old hand method and cheapening the operation. Patents to Sherman and Ingersoll, No. 255,038, March 14, 1882, and Ingersoll, No. 461,613, October 20, 1891, were granted for this machine.

To-day the shuttle flies at the rate of 180 to 250 strokes a minute, and yet the complex organization of the machine works with an energy, a uniformity, an accuracy and a continuity that leaves far behind the strength of the arm, the memory of mind, and the accuracy of the human eye, and yet, if the tiny thread breaks, the whole organization instantly stops and patiently waits the remedial care of its watchful master.Knitting Machines.—Knitting differs from weaving, braiding, or plaiting in the following respects: In weaving there are longitudinal threads called warp threads, which are crossed on a separate weft or filling thread. In braiding or plaiting all the threads may be considered warp threads, since they are arranged to run longitudinally, and instead of locking around a separate transverse thread at right angles, they extend diagonally and are interwoven with each other. In netting and knitting, however, there is but a single thread, which, in netting, is knotted into itself at definite intervals to leave a mesh of definite size, while in knitting the single thread is merely looped into itself without any definite mesh. Knitted goods have the peculiarity of great elasticity in consequence of this formation of the fabric, and for that reason find a special application in all garments which are required to snugly conform to irregular outlines, such as stockings for the feet, gloves for the hands, and underwear for the body.

Weaving, braiding, and netting are very old arts, but the art of knitting is comparatively modern. It is believed to have originated about the year 1500 in Scotland. In 1589 William Lee, of England, is credited with making the first knitting machine. It is said that the girl with whom he was in love, and to whom he was paying his attention, was so busy with her work of hand knitting that she could not give him the requisite attention, and he invented the knitting machine that they might have more time to devote to their love affairs. Another version is that he married the girl and invented the machine to relieve her weary fingers from the work of the knitting needle, and still another is that the machine was the leading object of his affections, to the neglect of his sweetheart, who “gave him the mitten” before he had knitted one on his machines.

The earliest circular knitting machine was by Brunel, described in British patent No. 3,993, of 1816. Power was applied to the knitting frame by Bailey in 1831, and the latch needle was patented in the United States by Hibbert, January 9, 1849, No. 6,025. This patent was extended for seven years from January 9, 1863, and covered a very important and universally used feature of the knitting machine. Research has shown, however, that the latch was not broadly new with Hibbert, as it appeared in the French patent to Jeandeau, No. 1,900, of April 25, 1806. Among the earlier knitting machines, the straight reciprocating type was most in evidence, and of which the Lamb machine was a popular form. The increased speed and capacity of the circular machine have, however, caused it to largely supersede the others. In the circular machine a circular series of vertical parallel needles slide in grooves in a cylinder, and are raised and lowered successively by an external rotating cylinder which has on the inner side cams that act upon the needles. The Branson ¹⁵/₁₆ Automatic Knitter, shown in Fig. 292, is a good modern illustration. It performs automatically fifteen-sixteenths of the various movements which ordinarily would be performed by hand on a hand machine. Its salient features are covered by patents No. 333,102, December 29, 1885, and No. 519,170, May 1, 1894. About 2,000 United States patents have been granted in the class of knitting and netting, and the value of hosiery and knit goods in the United States in 1890 was $67,241,013.An important branch of the textile art is cloth finishing, whereby the rough surface of the cloth as it comes from the loom is rendered soft and smooth. One method is to raise the nap of the cloth by pulling out the fibre by a multitude of fine points. Originally this was done by combing it with teasles, a sort of dried burr of vegetable growth, having a multitude of fine hook-shaped points. Machines with fine metal card teeth are now largely used for this purpose, and of which the planetary napping machine of Ott, patent No. 344,981, July 6, 1886, is an example. Another method of finishing the cloth is to iron or press it. Plate presses were first used in which smooth plates were folded in alternate layers with the cloth and pressure then applied, but in later years continuous rotary presses have been employed, that of Gessner, patent No. 206,718, August 6, 1878, re-issue No. 9,076, 9,077, February 17, 1880, is one of the earliest examples of a continuous rotary press. The old Gessner presses of Saxony were the pioneers in this field. A modern Gessner cloth press is seen in Fig. 293.

In the field of textiles there are many related arts and machines. There are hat felting and finishing machines, darning machines, quilting machines, embroidering machines, processes and apparatus for dyeing and sizing, machines for printing fabrics, machines for making rope and cord, machines for winding and working silk, and in treating the raw material there are cotton-pickers, cotton baling presses, cotton openers and cleaners, flax brakes and hackling machines, feeding devices, wool carding and cleaning apparatus, all in variety and numbers that defy both comment and count.

In fabrics every class of fibre has been called into requisition. Flax, wool, silk, and cotton have been supplemented with the fibres of metal, of glass, of cocoanut, pine needles, ramie, wood-pulp, and of many other plants, leaves and grasses.Artificial silk is made out of a chemically prepared composition, and the fibres are spun by processes simulating not only the act of the silkworm, but its product in quality. Vandura silk was spun from an aqueous solution of gelatine by forcing it through a fine capillary tube, but it attained little or no practical value. A far more important artificial silk is covered by the patents to De Chardonnet, No. 394,559, December 18, 1888; No. 460,629, October 6, 1891, and No. 531,158, December 18, 1894, and also in subsequent patents to Lehner and to Turk. These all relate to the manufacture of artificial silk by spinning threads or filaments from pyroxiline (solution of gun cotton), collodion, or some such glutinous solution which evaporates rapidly, leaving a tiny thread, having most of the characteristics of silk and produced by the same method employed by the silk worm when it expresses and draws out its viscid liquid. The De Chardonnet artificial silk took a “Grand Prix” at the Paris Exposition in 1889, and the industry is growing to considerable proportions. Large works are in operation at BesanÇon, in France, producing 7,000 pounds per week, and it is said that the plant is to be increased to a capacity of 2,000 pounds a day. Similar works at Avon, near Coventry, England, have an equal capacity, and other factories are about to be established in Belgium and Germany.

Polished or diamond cotton is a lustrous looking article of a soft silky nature, formed by plating the threads with a liquid emulsion of a waxy and starchy substance, and polishing the threads with rapidly revolving brushes.Mercerized Cloth.—In late years a distinct novelty has appeared on the shelves of the dry goods stores. Beautiful, filmy fabrics, and lustrous embroidery thread, not of silk, but so close to it in appearance as to be scarcely distinguishable, have gained much popularity and attained a large sale. They are known as mercerized goods. About the middle of the century John Mercer, of England, found that when cotton goods were treated with chemicals (either alkalies or acids), a change was produced in the fibre which caused it to shrink and become thicker, and which imparted also an increased affinity for dyes. He took out British patent No. 13,296, of 1850, for his invention, but practically nothing further was done with the process. Recently the important step of Thomas and Prevost of mercerizing under tension gave some new and wonderful results. United States patents No. 600,826 and No. 600,827, of May 15, 1898, disclose this process. The cloth or thread, while being treated chemically, is at the same time subjected to a powerful tension that causes the fibres (softened and rendered glutinous by the chemicals) to be elongated or pulled out like fibres of molten glass, giving it the same striated texture and fine luster that silk has, and by substantially the same mechanical agency, for it is the elongation of the plastic glutinous thread from the silk worm that gives the thread its silky luster, by a process which has a familiar illustration in the molecular adjustment that imparts luster to spun glass or drawn taffy.

Standing in the light of the Twentieth Century, and looking back through past ages, we find the art of spinning and weaving in an ever present and unbroken thread of evidence all along the path of history—through wars and famine, floods and conflagrations; through the progress and decay of nations, through all phases of change, and the vicissitudes of centuries, it has never been relegated to the domain of the lost arts, but has remained a persisting invention. It has been a paramount necessity to the human race, indissolubly locked up with its continuity and welfare, and will ever continue to supply its work in maintaining the greater fabric of human existence.