SEVERAL MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 137 



be employed by the superseded plans of working, and also 

 by the employment of more capital at increased profits in 

 the trades so improved and extended. These are the 

 benefits conferred upon Society and Nations by men of 

 original genius and great mental powers, such as were 

 eminently displayed by the late John Heathcoat. The 

 old bobbing -net trade giving support to a small circle of 

 working people and petty dealers at Nottingham, has now 

 become extended into a great branch of national industry, 

 filling the world with all kinds of plain and gaudy lace- 

 netting, from the " mosquito net " to the most elegant and 

 fantastic adornment of beauty and fashion. 



" It is a vulgar error " to suppose that the several 

 valuable machines now employed in our cotton and other 

 manufactures were originally conceived and brought into 

 successful operation at some one time by their respective 

 inventors. 



The entire history of all important inventions goes to 

 disprove this assumption, and to show that the most valu- 

 able mechanical inventions in use have been patiently 

 worked out from the simple conception of a new principle 

 of action, to be substituted for the practice then in use. 

 This, as above shown, was the origin of the method con- 

 ceived and pursued with such marvellous success by Mr. 

 Heathcoat in giving to his new lace-frames a thousand- 

 fold power over the old ones worked by hand, for making 

 plain and figured lace. 



We are not to limit our estimate of the value of Mr. 

 Heathcoat^s inventions to their application in giving such 

 a vast extension to this one branch of textile manufacture. 

 His simple but clearly original thought was that of passing 

 the threads of the woof through those of the warp, then 

 delivering them into conductors on the opposite side, there 

 to be repassed and delivered into the former conductors, 

 the movements being under mechanical control in place of 



