AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 307 



ing machine. He had never set foot inside a cotton or woolen 

 mill at the time when he undertook to revolutionize their entire 

 methods. A strange-looking and clumsy machine Cartwright's 

 first power-loom was, according to his own description. " The 

 warp," he wrote to a friend, " was placed perpendicularly, the reed 

 fell with a force of at least half a hundred-weight, and the springs 

 which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a 

 Congreve rocket. It required the strength of two powerful men 

 to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time'; but 

 I succeeded in weaving by its aid a piece of coarse cloth like sail 

 cloth. Conceiving, in my great simplicity, that I had accom- 

 plished all that was required, I then secured what I thought was 

 a most valuable property, by a patent, on April 4, 1785. This be- 

 ing done, I then condescended to see how other people wove ; and 

 you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy mode 

 of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I 

 then saw, I made a loom in its general principles nearly as they 

 are now made." The theologian, having learned what the weavers 

 could tell him, taught them more than they had been able to 

 teach themselves in a thousand years. 



The principle and the working of the hand-loom and the 

 power-loom of Dr. Cartwright were the same, and they continue 

 to be the same throughout all the modifications of the perfected 

 loom. Their three fundamental motions are, first, the " shedding," 

 or dividing of the warp threads by means of harnesses, to permit 

 the passage of the weft threads between them ; second, the " pick- 

 ing " or shooting of the weft ; and, third, the " battening '' or beat- 

 ing home of the weft. In the first power-loom, Dr. Cartwright 

 combined, with the frame, the beam, the heddles, and the har- 

 nesses of the hand-loom, mechanical substitutes for the weavers' 

 hands and feet. They were tappets and treadles, for operating on 

 the warp ; apparatus for throwing the shuttle, driving home the 

 weft, letting off the warp, taking up the cloth, stopping the loom 

 on the breaking of a thread, and self-acting temples. The prob- 

 lem of weaving once solved, however crudely, improvements upon 

 Dr. Cartwright's loom followed naturally. Dr. Jeffray, a Paisley 

 physician, soon improved the Cartwright loom by introducing a 

 device to prevent the breaking of the weft ; and it was again im- 

 proved by one Miller, of Dumbartonshire, who substituted for the 

 spring, in throwing the shuttle, the direct action of the motive 

 power. The splendid machines of to-day, doing their beautiful 

 work so smoothly, so perfectly, so rapidly, have grown gradually, 

 one improvement following another, out of the clumsy Cart- 

 wright machine so quaintly described above. It is a source of 

 pride to American manufacturers that in this department also 

 the contributions of American inventors have vastly advanced 



