WEAVING (from weave, AS. OlIG. ircban, Ger. wcbcn, to weave; connected with Gk. iicpot, hyphos, web, Kt. grparubhi, wool spinner, spider). The art by which yarns or threads of any substance are interlaced so as to form a continuous web, the threads being in two groups running at right angles to each other. The threads running throughout the length of the weh at•e the warp; those interlacing with it transversely• are the filling-threads, or woof.
The operation is performed by ha ml in a ma chine called a hand-loom and by power in the power-loom. (See Loom.) The warp threads are arranged on a warp•beam and set up in the loom, having been arranged on the various loom harnesses and passed through the interspaces of the loom-reed—usually before the warp is placed in the loom—and after being stretched tight from the warp-beam placed at the hack to the cloth roll in front are ready to be woven.
There are three underlying principle move ments in the weaving of textile fabrics: First. the 'forming of the shed' is accomplished in various ways, but results in separating the warp threads into two or more series which may be raised o• depressed, leaving a horizontal space through which the tilling is 'picked,' either by the hand of the weaver or the ineehanisin of the loom, completing the second movement ; by the third movement the thread left in the shed is `beaten up' by the action of the lathe or batten which carries the reed.
The process of weaving is simply a continual repetition of these three movements in the order named.
The simplest form of weaving was that em ployed in making the mats of uncivilized nations. These consisted of single untwisted fibres, usual ly vegetable, arranged side by side to the re quired width, the length being governed by the length of the fibres themselves; these were tied at each end to a stick so arranged that the fibres were kept straight, and on the same plane. The
weaver then lifted up every other of these longi tudinal threads and passed under them a trans verse thread which he first attached by tying or twisting to the outermost fibre of the side commenced with and afterwards in the same way to that on the other after it had been passed through the whole series. The acquisition of the art of spinning threads of any length enabled more advanced nations to give greater length to the warp threads, which after being arranged in parallel lines between two beams and held in po sition by parallel tree-trunks, to which they were secured, were ready for the weft-yarn, which, secured to a stick or threaded into a needle, was woven in and out of the warp threads by hand, as in the more primitive basket-weav ing. The development of the modern loom and its mechanism is described in detail in the ar ticle Loom.
Lip to the end of the eighteenth century weav ing was performed wholly by hand-looms; these were usually operated by the weavers in their own homes, and the fabrics produced were usual ly made from yarns spun by the weaver or some member of the family. About the middle of the eighteenth century machinery for spinning yarns began to be improved so that there came a de mand for an improved loom; the result was the production of a power-loom in 1785 by Dr. Ed mund Cartwright, which came into successful operation in weaving-sheds or factories in the early part of the nineteenth century. The de velopment of the industry has been attended by some of the most wonderful mechanical inven tions. The result is the automatic production by machinery of fabrics rivaling if not surpass ing the most elaborate and costly made by hand with far greater rapidity and a greater degree of perfection.