SEVERAL MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 139 



was mostly suspended^ the carding, spinning, and weaving 

 by the ancient hand-machines being done in the farm- 

 houses mostly by grown-up members of the families. 

 These fabrics are called " domestics," to mark them as di- 

 stinct from the finer and more ornamental kinds imported 

 for " best dresses " and other decorations. 



The hand-cards then in use were mostly obtained from 

 England, though a portion of the coarser sorts were made 

 in the several localities. About the close of the last century 

 a change iu the carding process was brought about by the 

 introduction of the "cylinder carding engines" from 

 England, by which the hand-carding was superseded, and 

 the preparation for spinning more perfectly effected. Upon 

 this change, in place of importing the hand-cards, a demand 

 arose for the kind of wire-cards especially adapted for 

 covering or clothing the cylinders of the new engines, and 

 these could only be obtained from England. But the un- 

 certainty and delays in importing these machine-cards to 

 replace the worn-out or damaged cards on the cylinders 

 had at times led to the " stoppage of the carding-mills," 

 and thereby created an urgent demand for domestic-m&die 

 machine cards. 



In this state of the wire-card trade Mr. Amos Whitte- 

 more (then residing near Boston, and having a small trade 

 in hand- card making) began his experiments for construct- 

 ing a Machine to make cards by continuous rotative 

 power. His first step was to examine the movements re- 

 quired to form the wire staples, or " card-teeth,'^ as they 

 were set in the sheets of leather to form the hand-cards. 

 The complete card being formed with wire staples, the 

 legs passed through the sheets of leather, and the flat 

 crowns of the staples pressing against the leather, and the 

 legs bent forwards to a slight angle with the sheet, so that 

 when set in rows their points would successively take hold 

 of the fibres to be carded, and arrange them evenly along 



