THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1891 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES 



SINCE COLUMBUS. 



VI. THE EVOLUTION OF WOOL SPINNING AND WEAVING. 



By S N. DEXTER NORTH. 



THE card, and all the machinery preliminary or complement- 

 ary to its work, are of later development than the inven- 

 tions for mechanical spinning, which created the necessity for 

 improved methods of carding. The evolution of the spindle is 

 the central point in this development. The spinning of wool 

 with distaff and spindle was the only method known until 1530, 

 when one Jurgens, a baker of Brunswick, invented the one- 

 thread spinning-wheel. A similar instrument was in use in India 

 long anterior to this date, but Europe knew it no earlier. This 

 wheel remained in common use until it was superseded by the 

 spinning-frame. But it was improved a century later by the ad- 

 dition of a second bobbin, the invention of M. Besniere, so that 

 both hands could be used in spinning, and the product nearly 

 doubled at the same cost for labor. 



The spinsters were wonderfully clever with this wheel, and 

 performed feats which machinery can not surpass. The transac- 

 tions of the British Royal Society have immortalized a Norfolk 

 lady, Mary Pingle by name, by recording her achievement of 

 spinning a pound of wool into 84,000 yards (nearly forty-eight 

 miles) of yarn ; and Mr. Vickerman vouches for the statement 

 that a Lincolnshire spinster, named Ives, spun a pound of wool 

 into 168,000 yards (95| miles) on a one-thread wheel. The ordinary 

 spinsters of the period reached 13,000 yards in coarse yarns, and 

 39,000 yards in the superfine qualities.* 



* Charles Vickerman, lecture on The Woolen Thread. 

 vol. xxxix. 21 



