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HEROES OF

THE LABORATORY AND THE WORKSHOP.

RICHARD ARKWRIGHT,

THE INVENTOR OF COTTON MACHINERY.

Born 1732-Died 1792.

DR. DARWIN, in his "Loves of the Plants," has described poetically the process of cotton-spinning, and in a note to his verse, gives an interesting and graphic account of the machinery employed by the extraordinary man to whose ingenuity this country is so much indebted. "On the river Derwent, near Matlock, in Derbyshire, Sir Richard Arkwright has erected his curious and magnificent machinery for spinning cotton, which had been in vain attempted by many ingenious men before him. The cotton wool is first picked from the pods and seeds by women; it is then carded by cylindrical cards, which move against each other with different velocities. It is taken from these by an iron hand or comb, which has a motion similar to that of scratching, and takes the wool off the cards longitudinally in respect to the fibres or staple, producing a continued line loosely cohering

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called the rove or roving. This rove, yet very loosely twisted, is then received or drawn into a whirling canister, and is rolled by the centrifugal force in spiral lines within it, being yet too tender for the spindle. It is then passed between two pairs of rollers, the second pair, moving faster than the first, elongate the thread with greater rapidity than can be done by hand, and is then twisted on spoles, or bobbins." To this short but comprehensive account of the process of cotton-spinning, is added the information that the great fertility of the cotton plant in these fine flexible threads (while those from hemp, flax, or the bark of the mulberry tree, require a previous putrefaction of the pithy substance, and much mechanical labour, and afterwards bleaching), renders this plant of great importance to the world. The poet prognosticates that since this ingenious machine has not only greatly abbreviated and simplified the labour and art of carding and spinning the cotton wool, but performs both these better than can be done by hand, it is probable that the cloth of this small reed may become the principal clothing of mankind.

"Some are born great-some achieve greatness," says Shakespeare; Richard Arkwright belonged to the latter class. He was born in the year 1732, at Preston, in Lancashire, of parents in a very humble grade of life, and being the youngest of thirteen children, we may readily suppose, owed little to the amount of school learning he received; but he had a ready wit, and contrived to earn a small pittance,

with which he hired a cellar and set up a barber's shop, with this sign-board over it—"The Subterranean Barber who shaves for 1d." This novelty took amazingly; and Dick had a great run. The rival barbers of the town were fain, in consequence, to lower their terms, and then he came down to a halfpenny. It is related of him that, on one occasion, he had a cobbler for his customer, with so stubborn a beard that he complained it would cost him a razor, and that the halfpenny would not pay for the wear and tear. But the cobbler persisted he would pay no more than the sign-board charged, and Arkwright good-humouredly expressed himself content. This so pleased the cobbler that he became a firm friend to Arkwright, and introduced him to a man who had invented some machinery, from whom he gained his first ideas on the subject.

It seems beyond doubt that he continued in the trade of a barber till about 1760, when he gave up shaving and commenced business as an itinerant dealer in hair, travelling up and down the country collecting the material, which he afterwards dressed and sold again to the wig-makers, among whom he soon acquired the character of keeping a better article than others in the same line.

It would appear that his first effort in mechanics was an attempt to discover the perpetual motion. It was when inquiring after a person to make him some wheels for a project of this kind that he met with a clockmaker named Kay, who dissuaded him from pursuing his idea, by urging that, in applying the inven

tion to cotton-spinning, he would have a better chance of making a profitable concern. Arkwright, who knew that many inventors of spinning machinery had been utterly ruined, was very doubtful about the matter, and unwilling to incur expense. He and Kay, however, made application to a Mr. Atherton for some pecuniary assistance, to enable them to prosecute their plans. So miserable was the appearance of the former barber that this gentleman refused to have anything to do with the adventure. The two associates persevered, and, having made a model of the machine they had projected, went, in 1768, to Preston, where they made and erected a machine in the dwellinghouse attached to the grammar-school of the town. At that time Arkwright was almost in rags; and "being a burgess of Preston" he could not appear to vote during a contested election till the party with whom he sided provided him with a decent suit of clothes.

No sooner was the election over than he quitted Preston and went to Nottingham, being apprehensive that the people of Lancashire would be hostile to an attempt to introduce spinning by machinery. Up to that time the cloths of English manufacture, called calicoes," which were made in imitation of Indian goods, and so called from Calicut, the place of their production, were formed by a mixture of linen and cotton the warp was composed of linen and the weft of cotton, it being found impossible, by any means then known, to spin the fibres of cotton into a thread suffi

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