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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



cloth, but they permitted one hand to "be used exclusively in 

 throwing the shuttle, while the other was solely occupied in driv- 

 ing home the weft. The comparative speed of fabrication, by 

 reason of this invention, won for it the name of " fly-shuttle " ; 

 and in truth it is likely that no division of labor between the two 

 hands of one operative ever produced results equal to those which 

 this invention secured. 



At once, upon its general adoption, the average production of 

 a loom was more than doubled, and the cloth was of a better qual- 

 ity than formerly. The same shuttle arrangement, with hardly 

 any change, appears in the looms upon which our grandmothers 

 wove their homespun, and they may still occasionally be seen in 

 the old farm-houses of the United States. 



Fig. 20. Common Fly-shuttle Loom. 



As early as 1078 a French naval officer, M. de Gennes, con- 

 ceived the idea of a power-loom, and communicated his plan to 

 the French Academy. He described, prophetically, the advan- 

 tages its utilization would effect in economy, in uniformity of 

 product, and in increase of production precisely as we have since 

 realized them. More than a century elapsed before his ideas were 

 successfully utilized. Numerous attempts were made, but through 

 one defect or another they failed of adoption. 



A studious clergyman, addicted more to poetry than to trade, 

 led the way in the solution of this problem. His name Avas Ed- 

 mund Cartwright, already alluded to in connection with the comb- 



