ARKWRIGHT, SIR RICHARD, is so intimately associated with the progress of the mighty cotton manufacture in this country, that that history could not be understooi without a notice of his inventions and ire provements.
Born in 1732 at Preston, of parents to humble to give him anything more that a very slight education, Arkwright had to tarn his living, first as a barber, and then as a dealer in hair. But his mind was buy all this time. To use Carlyle's quaint language —' Nevertheless, in stropping of razors, in shaving of dirty beards, and the contradictions and confusions attendant thereon, tie man had notions in that rough head of his! Spin dles, shuttles, wheels, and contrivances, plying ideally within the same ; rather hopeless looking, which, however, he did at last bring to bear. Not without difficulty.' Conflicting statements render it difficult to trace the history of the machinery by which Arkwright so greatly improved the cotton manufacture. It is, however, certain tint in 1 767 he employed a clockmaker named Kay, then residing at Warrington, to make a nodel, which was speedily followed by a working machine. This machine was first see up at Preston ; but, fearing to encounter such riotous opposition as had been called forth shortly before by the introduction of Har greaves' spinning-jenny, Arkwright removed it to Nottingham, where he obtained pecuniary assistance from the Messrs. Wright, bankers, and shortly entered into partnership with Messrs. Need and Strutt, eminent stocking manufacturers of that town. By this impor tant connection the mechanical skill of Mr. Jedediah Strutt, who invented the contrivance by which Lee's stocking-frame was adapted to the production of ribbed stockings was brought to bear upon certain deficiencies of the ma chine with great advantage. In 1760 a patent was obtained for the machine, the most im portant feature of which was the use of two pairs of rollers, technically called drawing rollers, the first pair revolving slowly in con tact with each other, and the second pair revolving in like manner, but with greeter velocity. The lower roller of each pair was
fluted longitudinally, and the upper one covered with leather, and the two were pressed together with a gentle pressure by means of weighted levers, in order that they might take sufficient hold of the soft cotton passed be tween them. The fibres of the cotton-wool were first laid smooth and straight, by carding or combing, so as to produce a soft loose rib bon or cord called a sliver, the end of which was introduced between the first pair of rollers. In passing between them it received no further change than a slight compression, but as from them it was conducted to the second pair of rollers, moving with twice, thrice, or more times the velocity of the first pair, it was ex tanded or drawn out to two, three, or more tines its original length, its thickness being rekuced in like proportion. As this action is eff*ed by the sliding of the fibres upon one another, the distance between the two pairs of rollers must be so adjusted, in relation to the average length of the fibres, that the two pairs may never have hold of one fibre at the same time. Such is the beautifully simple principle upon which, with the aid of twisting, the thick soft sliver or carding is converted into a fine, hard, and compact yarn or thread.
Arkwright's spinning-machine was, in the first instance, worked by horse power ; but in 1771 the partners built a spinning mill for worldng by water -power at Cromford, in Dertyshire, from which establishment, 'the nursing-place,' as it has been styled, 'of the factory opulence and power of Great Britain,' the machine took the name of the water frame, and the yarn produced by it that of water-twist. It was in the arrangement of this establish ment, the first of its kind, that Arkwright manifested that extraordinary talent for me chanical contrivance and adjustment, and for the no less difficult task of training human agents to take their places as part and parcel of a vast and complicated automatic apparatus, which earned for him the title of father of the factory system.