1 1 Mechanic Arts. [Cfl ap. IX. 



tions and improvements of the mechanical kind, by 

 which the last age is distinguished. 



The diiTerent kinds of machinery for carding 

 and spinning cotton, which modern times have 

 produced, have proved a source of incalculable 

 advantage to manufacturers, and do honour to the 

 age. Less than forty years ago, the only machine 

 much used for reducing cotton wool into yarn, was 

 the one-thread xvheal. Other methods, indeed, 

 had been thought of, and proposed for promoting 

 a more easy and expeditious process 3 but without 

 any extensive or permanent success. At length, 

 about the year 1767, Mr. James Hargrave, an 

 English weaver, constructed a machine, by means 

 of ^^ hich any number of threads, from twenty to 

 eighty, might be spun at once, and for which he 

 obtained a patent. This machine is called a Jenny ^ 

 and deservedly holds a high place among moderr^ 

 inventions. The astonishing abridgment of la-^ 

 bour which it produces has been too much and too 

 generally celebrated to require illustration here. 

 Soon after the invention of this machine, Mr, 

 Hargrave contrived a new method of carding 

 cotton, more easy and expeditious than the old 

 way of carding by the hand, v^liich was now found 

 inadequate to the rapid progress and large demands 

 of the improved mode of spinning. He was suc- 

 ceeded by several other ingenious artists, who la- 

 boured with success, and who produced that expe-^ 

 ditious plan of carding, by what are commonly 

 called CijUndcr cards, which is now so extensiveiy 

 and profitably practised. 



The next and most remarkable improvementJi 



