LOOM. Nawl, ARAB. ; TAnt, Rack RAs, HIND. ; Aba Aba Kudu, MALAY ; Mansaj, PEns. The hand-loom is to be seen in most parts of S.E. Asia and the Archipelago, but the fly-shuttle is rarely used. Both cotton and silk fabrics are woven. During the period anterior to the great advance made by Jacquard, the con trivances at the disposal of the weaver may be divided into three classes. The simplest of these donsisted first of the use of healds for figure weaving in any practicable number and order without machines, as in weaving satins, twills, spots, or small figures. In the second, or diaper weaving (from the Latin Diasper), invented, it is thought, by the silk-weavers of Asia, and known in England in the 11th century, two or more divisions or sets of healds in harness were used, each division containing eight healds connected with treadles. By this system, tablecloths, shawls, and other fabrics of widely various design might be woven. In the third system, the warp was passed through two sets of harness, the first of which formed the pattern, as it were, upon a large scale, the second breaking it up into detail, and completing the necessary minute intersections. This was known technically as the draw-loom. The merit of introducing perforated cards, generally claimed for Jacquard (1801), has been traced back to Bonchon who in 1725 employed a band of pierced paper, pressed by a hand-bar against a row of horizontal wires, arranged like a comb, so as to carry loops through the corresponding blank spaces. Improvements were made in 1728 by M.
alcon, and in 1745 by Vaucanson. But from the Jacquard machine may be said to have been developed the entire series of complex ingenious machinery which has given its marvellous expan sion to the European weaver's craft. Among the more marked stages of development stands the introduction, by Dr. Cartwright, in 1785, of the power-loom, to supersede manual labour, preceded, yet perhaps without his knowing it, by the models of De Gennes, Roberts, and Barber. There are not less than 700,000 power-looms at work in Great Britain, producing daily about 15,000 miles of cloth, and giving employment to 300,000 weavers.
Lace manufacture is the highest and most complicated of the processes of weaving. The first attempt of Mr. Heathcoat in his bobbin-net machine, patented in 1808, was followed up by the more consummate effort of his mechanical genius. The Levers machine, provided with a double-action of Jacquard apparatus, is chiefly employed in weaving guipure or narrow lace, though it can be arranged to produce lace of any width, and even shawls. The Levers lace frame fairly represents the present state of the lace manufacture of Nottingham, and in it is reached as yet the highest or culminating point in that important and attractive industry.—Barlow on iVeaving.