use; and, in fact, several ingenious individuals seem to have turned their attention to the subject. Long before this time, indeed, spinning by machinery had been thought of by more than one speculator. A Mr Wyatt, of Litchfield, is stated to have actually invented an apparatus for that purpose so early as the year 1733, and to have had factories built and filled with his machines, both at Birmingham and Northampton. These undertakings, however, not being successful, the machines were allowed to perish, and no model or description of them was preserved.* There was also a Mr Laurence Earnshaw, of Mottram, in Cheshire, of whom it is recorded,' says Mr Baines, in his History of Lancashire,† 'that, in the year 1753, he invented a machine to spin and reel cotton at one operation, which he showed to his neighbours, and then destroyed it, through the generous apprehension that he might deprive the poor of bread' a mistake, but a benevolent one.

It was in the year 1767, as we have mentioned, that Arkwright became acquainted with Kay. In 1768 the two friends appeared together at Preston, and immediately began to occupy themselves busily in the erection of a machine for the spinning of cotton-thread, of which they had brought a model with them. They had prevailed upon a Mr Smalley, who is described to have been a liquor merchant and painter of that place, to join them in their speculation; and the room in which the machine was fixed was the parlour of the dwelling-house attached to the free grammar-school, the use of which Smalley had obtained from his friend, the schoolmaster. At this time Arkwright was so poor that, an election contest having taken place in the town, of which he

* See Essay on the Cotton Trade, by Mr Kennedy, Manchester Memoirs, second series, vol. iii.

† Vol. i, p. 115.

was a burgess, it is asserted that his friends, or party, were obliged to subscribe to get him a decent suit of clothes before they could bring him into the poll

room.*

On

As soon as the election was over, he and Kay left Preston, and, carrying with them their model, betook themselves to Nottingham, the apprehension of the hostility of the people of Lancashire to the attempt he was making to introduce spinning by machinery having, as Arkwright himself afterwards stated, induced him to take this step. arriving at Nottingham, he first made arrangements with Messrs Wrights, the bankers, for obtaining the necessary supply of capital; but they, after a short time, having declined to continue their advances, he took his model to Messrs Need and Strutt, stocking weavers of that place, the latter of whom was a particularly ingenious man, and well qualified, from his scientific acquirements, of which he had possessed himself under many disadvantages, to judge of the adaptation of the new machinery to its proposed object. An inspection of it perfectly satisfied him of its great value; and he and Mr Need immediately agreed to enter into partnership with Arkwright, who accordingly, in 1769, took out a patent for the machine as its inventor. A spinning-mill, driven by horse power, was at the same time erected, and filled with the frames; being, unless we include those erected many years before by Mr Wyatt, the first work of the kind that had been known in this country. In 1771 Arkwright and his partners established another mill at Cromford, in the parish of Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, the machinery in which was set in motion by a water-wheel; and in 1775 he took out a second patent, including some additions which he had made to his original apparatus.

*Baines's History of Lancashire, vol. ii, p. 484,
See his Case,' 1781.

In what we have hitherto related, we have carefully confined ourselves to facts which are universally acknowledged; but there are other points of the story that have been stated in very opposite ways, and have given rise to much doubt and dispute.

The machinery for which Arkwright took out his patents consisted of various parts, his second specification enumerating no fewer than ten different contrivances es; but of these the one that was by far of greatest importance, was a device for drawing

out the cotton from a coarse to a finer and harder twisted thread, and so rendering it fit to be used for warp as well as weft.* This was most ingeniously managed by the application of a principle which had not yet been introduced in any other mechanical operation. The cotton was in the first place drawn off from the skewers on which it was fixed by one pair of rollers, which were made to move at a comparatively slow rate, and which formed it into threads of the first and coarser quality, but at a little distance behind the first was placed a second pair of rollers, revolving three, four, or five times as fast, which took it up when it had passed through the others, the effect of which would be to reduce the thread to a degree of fineness so many times greater than that which it originally had. The first pair of rollers might be regarded as the feeders of the second, which could receive no more than

*This was, in truth, the principal subject of Arkwright's first patent; and, accordingly, on the great trial (afterwards mentioned) which took place in June, 1785, his opponents accused him of endeavouring unfairly to prolong his first patent by means of his second.

+ In Arkwright's apparatus, which was a combination of the carding and spinning machinery, this first part of the process was somewhat modified; but the principle of the two pairs of rollers, the one revolving faster than the other, which forms the peculiarity of the machine, was employed as here described.

the others sent to them; and that, again, could be no more than these others themselves took up from the skewers. As the second pair of rollers, therefore, revolved, we will say, five times for every one revolution of the first pair, or, which is the same thing, required for their consumption in a given time five times the length of thread that the first did, they could obviously only obtain so much length by drawing out the common portion of cotton into thread of five times the original fineness. Nothing could be more beautiful or more effective than this contrivance; which, with an additional provision for giving the proper twist to the thread, constitutes what is called the water-frame or throstle. *

Of this part of his machinery, Arkwright particularly claimed the invention as his own. He admitted, with regard to some of the other machines included in his patent, that he was rather their improver than their inventor; and the original spinning-machine for coarse thread, commonly called the spinningjenny, he frankly attributed in its first conception to a person of the name of Hargrave, who resided at Blackburn, and who, he said, having been driven out of Lancashire in consequence of his invention, had taken refuge in Nottingham; but, unable to bear up against a conspiracy formed to ruin him, had been at last obliged to relinquish the farther prosecution of his object, and died in obscurity and distress.

There were, however, other parties who had an interest as well as Arkwright in these new machines, and who would not allow that any of them were of his invention. As to the principal of them, the waterframe, they alleged that it was in reality the invention of a poor reed-maker, of the name of Highs, or Hayes, and that Arkwright had obtained the know

*So called from its having been originally moved by water

ledge of it from his old associate Kay, who had been employed by Highs to assist him in constructing a model of it a short time before Arkwright had sought his acquaintance. Many cotton-spinners, professing to believe this to be the true state of the case, actually used Arkwright's machinery in their factories, notwithstanding the patent by which he had attempted to protect it; and this invasion of his monopoly was carried to such an extent, that at last he found himself obliged to bring actions against no fewer than nine different parties.*

The first of these, in which a Colonel Mordaunt was defendant, was tried in the Court of King's Bench, in July, 1781. Upon this occasion, however, the question as to the originality of the inventions was not mooted; the defence taken being the insufficiency of the specification on which the patent had been obtained; and upon that ground a verdict was given in favour of the defendant. On this result Arkwright abandoned the other eight actions he had raised; and instead of attempting any longer to maintain his patent in a court of law, published a

* It is asserted, in the article on the cotton manufacture, in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Brittanica, and repeated in a paper on the same subject in the 91st number of the Edinburgh Review, that a trial took place upon the subject of Arkwright's first patent in the year 1772, on which occasion he obtained a verdict establishing its validity. This statement, however, for which no authority is given, appears to be altogether without foundation. No such trial is alluded to in the course of the proceedings in the Court of King's Bench in June and November, 1785, although both that of July, 1781, and that of February, 1785, are repeatedly mentioned; nor is it noticed, we believe, in any of the earlier accounts of Arkwright's machinery. Mr Guest (who has written a history of the cotton manufacture, which is marked by a somewhat strong dislike to Arkwright) searched the records of the courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, for the year 1772, without finding any trace of it.