3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



invention in 1800, and its use has gradually become general in 

 figured goods. It is regarded as the greatest invention in the art 

 of weaving, next to the power-loom itself, and was only eclipsed 

 by that of our own inventor, Erastus B. Bigelow, who made the 

 Jacquard loom automatic. A report of the patent commissioner 

 has declared that " Mr. Bigelow's invention presents a machine 

 which is admitted to be unsurpassed by anything which the 

 mechanical genius of man has ever devised." Mr. Bigelow's 

 invention was i>atented in 1838, but not perfected for Brussels 

 carpets until ten years later. It revolutionized that industry at 

 once. The cost of weaving Brussels carpets had hitherto been 

 about thirty cents a yard, and the product of the hand-loom did 

 not exceed four yards a day. The Bigelow invention made it easy 

 for a single female weaver to weave from twenty-five to thirty 

 yards of carpet a day, at a cost for labor of about four cents a 

 yard. With the expiration of Mr. Bigelow's patents a most ex- 

 traordinary impetus was at once given to the carpet manufacture 

 in the United States, where to-day more carpets are made and 

 used than in any other country. 



The power-loom, as to-day constructed and used, is unquestion- 

 ably one of the most perfect, as it is one of the most complicated, 

 of human inventions. The range of textiles, hitherto made only 

 on hand-looms, is becoming, on account of the constant develop- 

 ment of the power-loom, more limited every year. It is only in 

 the production of fabrics in the weaving of which continual and 

 elaborate changes have to be made in the colored weft threads 

 that the hand-loom is still used excluding, of course, its perma- 

 nent use as a pattern-loom. 



The development of the loom has been accompanied by many 

 inventions which simplify and expedite loom-mounting, which 

 includes all the processes through which the warp yarns must 

 pass between the spinning-frame and the loom. Filling is wound 

 directly into a cop for the shuttle, and placed therein, ready for the 

 weaving. The processes to which war]) yarns are subject are known 

 as warping, sizing, beaming, healding, and sleying. They deter- 

 mine the character and variation of the weave ; and, in a sense, the 

 art of cloth manufacture, as distinguished from its mechanics, may 

 be said to center in them, and in the designing-room, from which 

 they are controlled. We have left ourselves no space in which to 

 even allude to the various interesting and ingenious machines now 

 utilized in the preparation of the warp for the loom. Necessarily 

 this is the point in the manufacture of fancy goods where auto- 

 matic machinery can not be wholly applied. In connection with 

 the action of the harnesses in the loom, all the variations of the 

 weave are determined by the designer, whose plans for the distri- 

 bution and shedding of the threads must be carried out by hand. 



