AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 303 



Fig. 19. Ring-spindle. 



lower counts of yarns. The flier-spindle has a rotary motion. In 

 cap-spinning (see illustration) the spindle and the cap are the 

 stationary parts. A tube or shell, which receives the bobbin, is 

 placed on the spindle, and its motion distributes the yarn upon 

 the spindle. Cap- 

 spinning is chiefly 

 utilized in the 

 finer counts of 

 yarn, as there is 

 no limit to the 

 speed at which 

 the bobbins may 

 be made to re- 

 volve. In ring- 

 spinning^ which 

 is more common /I 



in the cotton 

 manufacture, the 

 spindles revolve, 

 and the bobbins 

 are so attached as FlG< i 8 ._ C ap-spindl E . 

 to revolve with 



them, thus imparting their own twist. The ring-frame is more 

 largely used in the worsted-yarn manufacture for doubling, or 

 making twofold yarns, than for spinning. 



It may now be easier for the reader to fully comprehend the 

 difference between a woolen and a worsted thread made from the 

 same wool in many instances, but so differently treated in manipu- 

 lation that they seem almost as fundamentally unlike as a woolen 

 and a cotton thread. Worsted has received a treatment similar 

 in many respects to that by which a cotton thread is made. We 

 have seen that the worsted manufacture is a series of processes 

 continuously following each other, and that the woolen manu- 

 facture is a compound process intermittently carried 011. The 

 woolen sliver, after leaving the carding machine, is wound at 

 once upon bobbins attached to the mule. In this machine the 

 spindles have a compound motion, simultaneously in progress, 

 whereby the sliver is drawn and wound. This operation com- 

 pletes the woolen thread. This yarn requires very different 

 treatment, both in the weave and the finish, from the worsted 

 yarn. The latter is distinguished by a compact weave, ready at 



an even distribution of the yarn. But the use of the flier was not known in England be- 

 fore the end of the seventeenth century. In a pamphlet printed in 1681, by Thomas Fir- 

 min, there is an illustration of an improved wheel, with two spindles, provided with fliers, 

 having on them hooks or pins for directing the yarn on different parts of the bobbin. 

 Encyclopedia Britannica. 



