THE SPINNING PROPERTIES OF COTTON 



By W. LAWRENCE BALLS, M.A. 

 Late Felloiu of St. John's College, Cambridge 



In a recent number of Science Progress the writer indicated 

 some of the ways by which purely scientific investigations were 

 likely to yield results of economic value to the cotton trade. 

 The present note purports to show how some unexpected light 

 has since been thrown upon the causes on which the strength of 

 yarn depends, thereby indicating the possibility of a substantial 

 advance in the technique of spinning. 



Since the days of Crompton and Arkwright, over a century 

 ago, there has been only one fundamental change in the spinner's 

 craft. The ingenuity of the machinery which can take a hard 

 mass of compressed cotton and turn it first into a fragile rope of 

 parallel hairs, and then into a delicate twisted yarn, seems to 

 have reached the limit of invention. The one advance mentioned 

 above was the introduction of the comber, which — at an 

 intermediate stage in the preparatory processes — extracts 

 every hair below the required length. All the many improve- 

 ments and refinements which otherwise differentiate the modern 

 spinning mill from its predecessors have been in details, however 

 important, and not in essentials. 



As the previous article pointed out, the cotton trade has been 

 severely practical in its methods, for good reasons. Neverthe- 

 less, some technologists have been impressed by the imperfec- 

 tions of even the best products, and combining such criticism 

 with the actual technical difficulties experienced in the mills, 

 the whole problem reduces itself to one essential matter — the 

 strength of the yarn. For a given " count" or fineness of yarn, 

 and for a given number of twists per inch, the best yarn is that 

 which is strongest. 



It is the common experience of research students that some 



side issue of an investigation is often more informative than the 



particular inquiry first projected, and that when a subject is 



being studied from several different aspects, these side issues 



6 Si 



