AUT. 9. HISTORY OF INVENTIONS— HOUGH. 31 



American Indians. The simplest shuttle is a rod on which the 

 weft is wound. Improvements in the shuttle consist of devices for 

 guiding the apparatus more quickly and smoothly between the warp 

 filaments and end in the modern machine shuttle, which is auto- 

 matically driven with incredible rapidity backward and forward 

 between the "sheds " of the warp. The objects presented in this 

 series are suggestive of the salient features in the line of progress. 

 The Pueblo Indians use a rod of wood and wrap yarn upon it, 

 somewhat as children wind a kite string. A twig with a notch at 

 each end, a slat with closed points, as in netting needles, and hollow 

 stick pointed and furnished with the rudest sort of bobbin have 

 been used by different peoples in the hand epoch of culture. With 

 the domestication of the physical powers and the improvement of 

 the loom the shuttle became more and more effective. 



No. 1. Primitive shuttle. Twig of osiGr, vvitli tliread simply wound about it, 



151,738 

 No. 2. Wooden rod with weft wound diagonally about it. 



No. 3. Shuttle or antler, pronged at each end. Eskimos of Norton Sound 33,266 



No. 4. Rag-carpet shuttle. A block of wood notched roughly at each 



end and used iu the domestic hand loom for weaving carpet 



of rags, coarse chain of jute, cotton, and otlier materials. 

 No. 5. Japanese shuttle. Pronged at one end, closed at the other, with 



" skewer " in the opening 19,408 



No. 6. Eskimo shuttle. Prongs at either end, approaching each other and 



pointed 163.781 



No. 7. Hupa shuttle. Slender shaft, prongs at the ends, approaching like the 



beak of a bird. California 131,151 



No. 8. African shuttle. Body toggle-shaped ; bobbin a simple cylinder of wood 



revolving on a splint of palm-leaf stem. Liberia 168,079 



No. 9. Hand-loom shuttle. Body toggle-shaped ; bobbin a hollow reed working 



on a splint of hard wood 7,688 



No. 10. Early machine shuttle, of several pieces of wood and iron pointed ; open 



on both faces ; bobbin a strip segment of bamboo running on a 



splint of wood 153,172 



SERIES 3. — LOOM. 



Plate 31. 



The loom is a framework on which weaving is done. Essentially 

 it consists, first, of two crossbeams, called the " yarn beam " and the 

 " cloth beam," on which the warp is laid evenly; secondly, the devices 

 for crossing the alternate warp threads, so as to form "sheds," 

 through which the shuttle is passed backward and forward, and, 

 third, of some sort of batten, by means of which the weft is beaten 

 home after the shuttle has made an excursion. 



Many other mechanical parts have been added to this machine from 

 time to time; but the simplest loom is a framework in which much 



