in 



CARD 



s. 



f.trd,. 





fit- of 

 Card*. 



Hand card- 

 ing. 



Date of in 



trouuction 



, in the manufactures of cotton and wool, are 

 instruments used for preparing the fibres of those 

 substances for spinning them into thread, by straight- 

 ening the fibres, and rendering them parallel to each 

 other, so that each may have its full bearing and 

 proper tension, when a number are twisted together 

 to form a thread. % 



The card is a kind of brush made with wires in- 

 stead of hair, stuck through a sheet of leather, the 

 \viiv.i not being perpendicular to the plane of the 

 leather, but all inclining one way at a certain angle. 



From this description, such as are totally unac- 

 quainted with the subject may conceive, that cotton, 

 being stuck upon one of these cards, or brushes, 

 may be scraped with another card, in such a direc- 

 tion, that the inclination of the wire may tend to 

 throw the cotton inwards, rather than suffer it to 

 come out. The consequence of the repeated strokes 

 of the empty card against the full one, must be a 

 distribution of the cotton more evenly on the sur- 

 face ; and if one be then drawn in the opposite -direc- 

 tion across the other, it will, by virtue of the incli- 

 nation of its wires, take the whole of the cotton from 

 that card whose inclination is in the contrary direction. 



In this way the operation of carding was formerly 

 performed by the hand, with sheets of card nailed 

 upon thin boards, which were drawn and scraped 

 against each other till the cotton or wool was even- 

 ly diffused over the surface, and freed from all the 

 knotty or entangled parts. One of the cards being 

 then turned, and applied in an inclined position, so 

 as to scrape with one edge over the surface of the 

 other card, in the direction of its teeth, the cotton 

 was, by a particular manoeuvre, stripped off, and 

 coiled up into those short soft rolls, which were cal- 

 led Cardings, and were afterwards extended and twist- 

 ed by the spinning wheel. 



Such, in all probability, was the process employed, 

 with little alteration, during the five last centuries, in 

 the woollen manufacture of this kingdom, and ap- 

 plied, at subsequent periods, to the preparation of 

 cotton. The use of cards was most likely derived 

 from the Netherlands, at or before the time that our 

 woollen manufactures were improved by the emigra- 

 tion of Flemish weavers to this country during the 

 reign of Edward III. 



Cards continued to be imported till the year 

 1463, when the tradesmen and manufacturers of 

 London, and other parts of England, having made 

 heavy complaints to parliament, of the obstruction 

 to their own employment by the introduction of va- 

 rious foreign manufactured wares, an act was passed 

 in the third year of Edward IV. prohibiting wool 

 carda, among various other articles of iron, steel, 

 copper, &c, from being imported into this kingdom. 



The hand cards were succeeded by stock cards, 

 and these again by cylinder cards, which were brought 

 into extensive use by Sir Richard Arkwright in 1771, 

 ( See COTTON Manufacture. ) Since this period, the 



VOL. V. PART II. 



consumption of card* for cotton mill* hai been im- 

 mense. A very small carding machine will contain 

 upwards of 150,000 card wires of the coarsest kind ; 

 and we have visited an establishment of cotton mills, 

 where 150 of such carding machines were in constant 

 work. Thirty or forty machines are a very com- 

 mon number to find in one mill ; and these are so nu- 

 merous, as to make a very extensive trade in card 

 manufacture. 



Wool cards are of a coarser and stronger kind than 

 those used for cotton, but are applied in the same 

 manner, either on boards, for hand carding, or cover- 

 ed on cylinders for carding machines, as explained 

 under the articles COTTON Manufacture and WOOL- 

 LEN Manufacture. The card wires are the same 

 for either of these purposes, except in si/e. The wire 

 is bent into a staple, in the manner shewn <:t Fig. 1. 

 of Plate CXI. ad the legs of this staple are crip- 

 pled, or bent, in a second direction, as shewn by the 

 figure Y, which shews a card wire ready for fixing 

 the leather by, the two legs being stuck through 

 two holes in the sheet of leather. This fastens the 

 teeth firmly in their places ; and then the bend in the 

 legs, which is called the knee bend, gives the teeth 

 their proper angle of inclination, as is shewn in the 

 section of a sheet of cards at Z, Fig. 1. X is a view 

 of the back of the leather, shewing the arrangement 

 of the wires ; which is such, that the adjacent wires 

 do not fall behind each other, but, by filling up the 

 intermediate spaces between each, renders the cards 

 finer, the teeth being equally dispersed over the sur- 

 face of the leather. 



The cards used in the hand are called sheet cards ; 

 and the direction of the wire joining the two legs is 

 parallel to the length of the sheet. Sheet cards of a 

 greater length are also used for the top cards, or lugs 

 of the carding machine, and also for the great cylinders. 

 Another kind are called Jillet cards, being straps, or 

 fillets of leather, and the wire stuck across them. It 

 is this kind of fillet which is shewn at X, Fig. 1. 

 It is only used in the machine cards, when the fillet 

 is wrapped spirally round the small cylinders to cover 

 all its surface. 



The immense number of cards required in the cot- 

 ton mills, causes the manufacture of cards to be very 

 extensive ; and several very curious machines have been 

 invented for facilitating the processes, though they 

 have not yet come into general use. In the present 

 state of the trade, the principal seats of which are the 

 countries about Glasgow and Leeds, the processes 

 are divided into the preparation of the wires and the 

 leather. The latter is pierced by machinery at the 

 house of the manufacturer, who sends it out to the 

 cottagers, together with the wire, which they cut 

 and bend by three operations, (one performed by a 

 machine) ; and the women and children insert them 

 into the holes of the leather. The three operations 

 of making the wires, are, 1st, Cutting to length, 40 

 or 50 being cut together ; 2d, Doubling, whicn gives 

 SK 



Card.. 



Card wire*. 



PLATE 

 CXI. 

 Fig. I. 



Sheet 



card 



Fillet card*. 



Card wire 

 making. 



In York- 

 shire. 



