Upon his return, he recruited master mechanic Paul Moody to help him recreate and develop what he had seen. While visiting English textile mills, he memorized the workings of their power looms. Francis Cabot Lowell realized that for the United States to develop a practical power loom, it would have to borrow British technology. Successful power looms were in operation in England by the early 1800s, but those made in America were inadequate. For these reasons, weaving was the last step in textile production to be mechanized. In a power loom, movements coordinated by human hand and eye have to be replicated through the precise interaction of levers, cams, gears, and springs. And weaving, as opposed to spinning, requires a cycle of sequential steps and involves reciprocal movement as well as circular. Because the operations of a loom focus on such a small working area, its movements must be exact. All cloths were woven in basically the same way, although weavers followed patterns to produce cloths with intricate weaves. Yarn produced by machines in water-powered factories was still put out for weaving on hand looms in homes. The power loom allowed the wholesale manufacture of cloth from ginned cotton, itself a recent innovation of Eli Whitney's.Īccording to the Lowell National Historical Park Handbook, for the first two centuries of American history, the weaving of cloth was a cottage industry, even after the introduction of power spinning frames in 1790. The city of Lowell and other early industrial American cities grew supporting a nearby Francis Cabot Lowell's designed power loom, an amended version of the British power loom invented by Edmund Cartwright. The first American power loom was constructed in 1813 by a group of Boston merchants headed by Francis Cabot Lowell. View Image: Power Loom When the power loom became efficient, women replaced most men as weavers in the textile factories. The power loom became commonly used after 1820. It was improved upon by William Horrocks, the inventor of the variable speed batton (1813) and American, Francis Cabot Lowell. A prolific inventor, Edmund Cartwright also invented a wool-combing machine in 1789, continued to improve his power loom, invented a steam engine that used alcohol and a machine for making rope in 1797, and aided Robert Fulton with his steamboats.Ĭartwright's power loom needed to be improved upon and several inventors did just that. In 1785, Edmund Cartwright patented the first power loom and set up a factory in Doncaster, England to manufacture cloth. The power loom was a steam-powered, mechanically operated version of a regular loom, an invention that combined threads to make cloth.
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