Industry and Invention
Before the 1760s, textile production was a cottage industry using mainly flax and wool. In a typical house, the girls and women could make enough yarn for the man's loom. The knowledge of textile production had existed for centuries, and the manual methods had been adequate to provide enough cloth. Cotton started to be imported and the balance of demand and supply was upset.
Two systems had developed for spinning: the Simple Wheel, which used an intermittent process and the more refined Saxony wheel which drove a differential spindle and flyer with heck, in a continuous process. But neither of these wheels could produce enough thread for the looms after the invention by John Kay of the flying shuttle (which made the loom twice as productive). The first moves towards manufactories called mills were made in the spinning sector, and until the 1820s cotton, wool and worsted was spun in mills, and this yarn went to outworking weavers who continued to work in their own homes.
Read more about this topic: Textile Manufacture During The Industrial Revolution
Famous quotes containing the words industry and, industry and/or invention:
“My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.”
—Hannah More (1745–1833)
“Do not put off your work until tomorrow and the day after. For the sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor the one who puts off his work; industry aids work, but the man who puts off work always wrestles with disaster.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)
“The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)