Manchester Memoirs, Fi?/. /. (1905). 5 



Manchester mechanics know nothing at all about, and he 

 hopes shortly to see that the new fire engine (meaning 

 the steam engine) will be used in this district. 



There is a foot-note informing the reader that a 

 machine for spinning cotton, probably Crompton's mule, 

 has been working for some time amongst the spinners in 

 Manchester, and there is another being erected for 

 grinding corn and in a state of forwardness near Black- 

 friars Bridge, London. Although the first great departure 

 in weaving, Kay's fly-shuttle, had been at work nearly 

 50 years, he proceeds to say that it is not known to a 

 single weaver in the Norwich trade. 



He advocates with considerable force the creation ot 

 a school in the shape of a museum in which all the various 

 appliances known to man for spinning and weaving and 

 the mechanical arts should be exhibited, with a Professor 

 who knows all these things and is able to describe them 

 to the students, and who should be well versed in 

 mechanical and chemical knowledge. Students should 

 go to it after they had become accomplished in reading, 

 writing, and arithmetic, indeed, he advocated a secondary 

 technical school. The man in charge of it would be, he 

 says, a kind of general Oracle, who might be consulted 

 on mechanical movements which students might find 

 difficult to understand unaided. He wisely concludes, " in 

 a town like this Manchester, the opulence, and even the 

 very existence of which depends on manufactures, and 

 these again upon arts, machinery, and invention, a Public 

 Cabinet, devoted to this purpose would be at once of 

 general ornament and utility." 



This remarkable paper was read on January 9th, 1782, 

 and as we know, with the exception of this Society, which 

 has been an Academy of Science, and the Manchester 

 Mechanics Institution, founded 40 years later, the teaching 



