Cotton and Weaving Machinery
In 1833, Mason joined Asell Lamphaer at Killingly, Connecticut, to make the ring-frame for spinning. He remodeled and perfected the "ring" along with an improved frame.
In 1835, Mason moved to Taunton, Massachusetts, to join Crocker and Richmond, manufacturers of cotton machinery. He worked almost entirely on ring frames. The firm failed in 1837 during the financial crisis. The business was taken over by Messrs Leach and Keith. Mason was employed as foreman. On October 8, 1840, his greatest invention, a "self-acting mule" was patented. Competition required improvements and on October 3, 1846, he received a patent for "Mason's Self-acting Mule."
Though the company would also later venture into the production of locomotives, rifles and printing presses, the production of textile machinery would be its most important sector until the later 19th century.
Read more about this topic: William Mason (locomotive Builder)
Famous quotes containing the words cotton, weaving and/or machinery:
“We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, will often peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Tragi-Comedy, which is the Product of the English Theatre, is one of the most monstrous Inventions that ever entered into a Poet’s Thoughts. An Author might as well think of weaving the Adventures of Aeneas and Hudibras into one Poem, as of writing such a motly [sic] Piece of Mirth and Sorrow.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)