674 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
loom than any of the other inventions. I should think it was only 
capable of weaving very faulty cloth. 
By the end of the eighteenth century, it is said, there were 20,000 
power looms at work in Great Britain against 250,000 hand looms. 
The power looms, like the hand looms, were constructed mostly of 
wood, and must have been clumsy and uncertain in their perform- 
ances. Owing, too, to the greater strain of power weaving they 
must have quickly worn out. 
@ : 
= 5 
Fig. 57.—F ly-shuttle batton. Cp 
It was a long time before a convenient form for the power loom 
was generally adopted. Curiously enough, the form at length set- 
tled on was designed for a hand loom in 1771. 
The inventor of this loom (fig. 60) was a Mr. Almond, who ex- 
hibited and worked it before the Society of Arts, and received a 
prize of £50 for his encouragement. Its chief feature is the inverted 
batton. It has also extra rollers, by means of which the length of the 
loom is greatly diminished. 
A power loom erected for Mr. Monteith, a Glasgow manufacturer, 
about the beginning of the nimeteenth century by a loom builder 
named Austin is extremely like Almond’s hand loom. 
Mr. Austin presented a model of this loom to the Society of se 
of which figure 61 (pl. 11) is a representation. 
