WEAVING. 



839 



into the perforations in which their ends would 

 enter if the roller was applied to them, thereby 

 allowing the hooks in connection with them to 

 remain unmoved. An endless band of cards is made 

 to revolve over this roller, each being exactly 

 equal in size to one of its sides. These cards are 

 pierced with holes opposite the needles connected 

 with the hooks wanted to be raised, and when the 

 roller with the card on its face is pressed to their 

 ends, they pass through the holes in the card into 

 the perforations in the roller, and are raised on the 

 elevation of the frame carrying the lifting bars; 

 the rest of the needles being prevented by the card 

 from entering the roller, are pushed back, carrying^ 

 the hooks out of the way of the bars. The next 

 motion of the treadle by the weaver causes a 

 quarter of a revolution of the roller, and presents 

 another card to the ends of the needles, and so 

 on, until all the cards have revolved, which com- 

 pletes the pattern ; and which goes on to be re- 

 peated by the further working of the loom. The 

 various motions of the machine are all produced 

 by the action of the weaver's foot on one trea- 

 dle, which communicates with levers connected to 

 its moving parts, causing a vibratory and rotatory 

 motion of the roller, a revolving of the cards, and 

 1 he raising of the movable frame with the lifting 

 bars. 



Since the introduction of the Jacquard loom into 

 this country, considerable improvements have been 

 made upon it. The following description of im- 

 provements by Mr Jennings, along with the accom- 

 panying engravings, we extract from the " Trans- 

 actions of the Society of Arts, Manufactures and 

 Commerce." 



Mr Jennings' improvements consist, first, in a 

 method of reducing the height of the French loom, 

 which, in its original state, is eleven or twelve 

 feet, to about eight feet, and thus enabling it to 

 be put up without inconvenience in the low rooms 

 occupied by the weavers in Spitalfields; and 

 secondly, in a new and far superior method of lift- 

 ing the cords of the harness, and thus materially 

 diminishing their friction on one another and the 

 labour of the weaver. Both these improvements 

 are the subject of Plate XCII., of which fig. 10 

 represents the former, and figs. 1 to 9, inclusive, 

 the latter. 



Fig. 10 is a Dacfc view of the frame a a of a 

 French loom, to show the means by which it may 

 be lowered to act under an ordinary ceiling. For 

 this purpose the swinging frame, which required 

 to be suspended so much above the frame a, is re- 

 moved, and the revolving bar n is carried by two 

 horizontally sliding bars y, one at each end. These 

 are made to slide out and in by inclined metal 

 straps w w on the vertical sliding bars s s while 

 they raise and lower the lifting frame d d. 1 1 are 

 levers which, being connected with the treadle, lift 

 the bars s s. The inclined bar or strap w w passes 

 between friction rollers on the sliding bar y. The 

 revolving bar n must be carried out enough for its 

 corners, while revolving, to clear the pins//; but 

 this alone would not be enough to make it revolve, 

 and to give it enough would require the straps 

 w w to be much more inclined, which would in- 

 crease the friction and make it hard to raise ; there- 

 fore the retaining hook 5 6 is mounted on another 

 bar, which is suspended from a pin 7, while its 

 lower and inclined end 8 passes between two pins 

 ff g on the bar s, so that, when the bar s rises, the 

 square bar n is carried out enough to clear the pins 



//, and the retaining hook 5 is drawn inwards, 

 and pulls the stud 2 sufficiently in to cause a quar- 

 ter turn. A EH -shaped slide 10 10 is mounted on 

 the bar y, and urged against the bar n by the 

 spring 1 1 : this makes the bar present the face with 

 the card on correctly to the wires : the retaining 

 hook 5 is double, and kept upwards by a small 

 preponderance of the weight 6, but, if pulled 

 down, the under hook catches the pins, and will 

 cause a return of the bar n if required. 12 12 is 

 a wire sling in which the cards 13 pack themselves 

 and keep sliding down on the near side, while they 

 are continually in the act of being drawn from the 

 farther side over the rollers 14, 15, 16. The cards, 

 as they return over the rollers 18 and 19, are 

 drawn down by the weight of the portion 17, 

 which, in the real machine, instead of only three 

 cards, as shown in the plate, consists of a sufficient 

 number to overbalance the preceding ones. 



Fig. 1 is a side view of the new method of lift- 

 ing the cords of the harness, and fig. 2 a front view ; 

 fig. 3 a part of the side opposite to fig. 1. a a a a 

 the frame ; b b b b the 4080 or more cords to be 

 lifted in varying alternation ; they are all supported 

 by the board c c, through which they pass, and are 

 tied in knots at top to prevent their return or 

 dropping through : .they next pass through the per- 

 forated board d d ; this is the lifting board, and 

 slides up and down in the frame a a, therefore all 

 the cords have, just above the board, knots e e, 

 fig. 3, by which they are lifted ; they then pass 

 through the eyes of the sliding wires//, fig. 2, 

 and, lastly, through the perforated board g g, and 

 then are tied at h i to the 4080 strings^' j, which 

 pass through the compass board A A to the silk : 

 they are tied in what is called the Norwich tie ; 

 each cord lifts ten of the strings j j, the front cord 

 at h, fig. 2, lifting the ten front strings / / /, that 

 at i the ten front strings m in m, and the six inter- 

 mediate cords the six intermediate threads between 

 / and m of the ten sets. In fig. 1 each line b re- 

 presents eight cords, but, in fig. 2, each of the 

 lines b represents fifty-one; and between jj, fig. 1, 

 are fifty-one strings, each representing eighty 

 strings, so that there are fifty-one clear layers of 

 eighty strings each descending to the compass 

 board k: these all can rise or fall without any 

 sensible rubbing against each other. The sliding 

 wires // have no springs to protrude them, the 

 weight on the cords b b being made to do it : for 

 this purpose the holes through the boards c and g 

 are made forwarder towards the revolving bar n 

 than the corresponding eyes of the wires // so 

 that the pressure of the weights on these cords 

 tending to draw them straight, protrudes the 

 wires : and the better to regulate the force with 

 which they shall be protruded, the boards c and g 

 are made to slide in the frame a a in order to ad- 

 just it. Th'e varied perforations in the endless 

 band of cards, a portion of which, from 4 to 13, is 

 shown, being brought in succession by the revolv- 

 ing bar n and pressed against the end of the wires 

 //, determines which of the cords b shall be 

 pushed in and which left out : the cords b b, while 

 their wires/ are not thrust in, pass through slits 

 in the board d d, which are too narrow to let the 

 knots pass; therefore those cords are lifted, but 

 the slits terminate in round holes, shown in fig. 4, 

 through which the knots can freely pass (some 

 of them are shown in figs. 6 and 7 enlarged. 

 When the wires are thrust in, they bring the 

 knots on the corresponding cords over the holes, 



