FLAX 



423 



and remains so called at the present day, the only change being that in the holder 

 now in use one screw is used for two stricks instead of two screws for one strick. 



Fig. 932 will more clearly show the construction of this machine. A, square trun- 

 cated cylinder carrying the hackles ; B, oscillating arm or lever for supporting the 

 holder; c c, framing; D, crank and shaft; 



E, connecting rod from crank to oscillating 932 



arm ; F F F, hackles ; GOG, back board ; 

 H, holder. The first motion was given by 

 pulleys on the shaft D, which revolved 4 

 times to 1 of the hackle cylinder, by the 

 intervention of suitable wheels. The worm 

 and wheels for the bell motion were at- 

 tached in the usual manner to the shaft of 

 the cylinder. 



Machines of this construction continued 

 in rather limited use without any change or 

 competition till about the year 1825, when 

 a patent was taken for a machine known 

 as the pendulum machine. The flax in the 

 holder being suspended and swung back- 

 wards and forwards while the hackle re- 

 mained fixed, the flax was thus hackled, 

 stroke for stroke, on each of its sides ; the 

 boys, as in the last described, snatching off 

 the tow as it was formed, and at certain 

 times, that is at each rise of the pendulum (for it had a rising and falling motion to 

 imitate the hand workers in commencing at the extreme end of the flax), passing the 

 holder from one recess to another of the pendulous table, so as to arrive at the pro- 

 gressively finer tools when ranged along the machine ; but sometimes the different 

 tools were fixed upon the angles of a square cylinder that presented a finer range, 

 the whole length of the machine, by turning up a new angle at each rise of the 

 pendulum, when the labour of the boys was simply to put in the tow and take out 

 from it the flax. The adjoining diagram (jig. 933), without entering on any details of 

 a machine that was so little used, will make the theory of its action quite clear. 



A, hackle bench sometimes revolving so as to present different degrees of hackles at 

 its various angles, sometimes stationary with the gradation of hackles upon its length; 

 B B, pendulum arms ; c c, equal wheels working into each other ; D D, crank arms ; E, 

 radial slide-bars to preserve the 

 holder table ; H, holder table ; 

 F F F F, hackles ; G G, back 

 boards; u, direction in which 

 the holders swing; there were 

 the same wheels, &c., at each 

 end of the machine, and the 

 holder table H reached from 

 one to the other. The wheels, 

 cc, with all attached to them, 

 were made to rise and lower 

 upon the hackles, and the back- 

 boards c to rise when the hackle 

 bench turned. 



About the same time another 

 patent was taken out for a ma- 

 chine where the holders were 

 suspended above one end of 

 a travelling sheet of hackles. 

 This machine also required 

 hand labour to turn and transfer 

 the stricks, though the tow was 

 caused to fall clear from the 

 hackles by mechanical means. 

 The following sketch (fig. 934) 

 shows the principle upon which 

 this machine works, and, though 

 never much employed at the 

 time of its appearance, it has subsequently served as foundation for those that are now 

 ill the zenith of their prosperity. 



933 



