LOOM AND SPINDLE—HOOPER. 665 
The number of lines in the length of a design, of course, had to 
correspond with the number of cords in the machine. The drawboy 
machine was not to any great extent used for the purpose for which 
it was intended, viz, to supersede the drawboy of the compound 
figure weaving loom. I suspect the boy was useful in many ways 
about the loom, and, moreover, his wages would be no great matter. 
But late in the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth, the 
machine received a good deal of attention and was improved and 
adapted for use with the treadle hand loom. It enabled the weaver 
to work any complicated system of 
heddles, for small-pattern fancy weav- 
ing, with only 2 treadles instead of 20 
or more. 
Figure 48 is from Porter’s Treatise 
on Silk (1831). It represents an im- 
proved drawboy machine for which 
the Society of Arts awarded a prize in 
1807. Further improvements were 
made later, but it was finally super- 
seded by the famous machine which 
was perfected by Joseph Marie Jac- 
quard, and known in England as the 
“ Jackard ” machine. 
There can be no doubt that it is to 
Jacquard that the credit of rendering 
this machine thoroughly practical is 
due, although it has been proved that 
the fundamental idea of it, which con- 
sists in substituting for the weaver’s 
tie-up a band of perforated paper was first applied to the draw loom 
in 1725, while in 1728 a chain of cards was substituted for the paper 
and a perforated cylinder also added. 
These early contrivances were placed by the side of the loom and 
worked by an assistant. In 1745 Vaucanson placed the apparatus at 
the top of the loom and made the cylinder rotate automatically. But 
it was reserved for Jacquard to carry the machine to such perfection 
that, although many slight improvements have since been made in it, 
it remains to-day practically the same as he introduced it in 1801, 
notwithstanding the astonishing development of textile machinery 
during the nineteenth century ‘oar the universal adoption of the 
machine both for hand and power weaving. 
Although the invention was iniroduced, to the French public in 
1801, it was not till 1820 that a few Jacquard machines were smuggled 
Fic. 48.—The mechanical drawboy. 
(Early nineteenth century.) 
