The Early English Cotton Industry; With Some Unpublished Letters of Samuel Crompton (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 Excerpt: ...although the controversy over Arkwright's patents, in which Highs figured so prominently, afforded many opportunities. Yet, notwithstanding these difficulties, it is not easy to put aside as baseless all the evidence adduced by Guest in support of his case. That Highs was a man with an extraordinary aptitude for invention.is undoubted, and it is not improbable, in the activity to discover improved methods of spinning in the sixties of the eighteenth century, that he did experiment with a machine at least similar to the jenny. At the same time, it is scarcely less probable that others did likewise.2 As already pointed out, the jenny reproduced mechanically the hand operations necessary in spinning with the wheel, and a machine of the character of the jenny was 1 Guest, History of the Cotton Manufacture, pp. 13-14, 53-54, also British Cotton Manufacture. "Ce que Hargreaves trouva, beaucoup d'autres l'avaient cherche en meme temps que lui.... C'est ainsi que Hargreaves put fitre accuse de n'fitre pas le premier ou le seul auteur de son invention " (Mantoux, La Revolution au XVIII' Siicle, p. 210). the obvious line of advance. Although Highs was a man in whose mind the idea of the jenny was likely to originate, it is impossible, on the evidence, to say that it did so. What does seem clear is, that it was in association with Hargreaves that the jenny became a practicable machine, although when it left his hands it was not a perfect machine and quickly underwent improvements.1 Nevertheless, it had made possible the spinning of weft with a facility before unknown, and it maintained its position in the cotton industry for a long period, when it was largely superseded by the "mule." Probably, as M. Mantoux suggests, -Hargreaves did not at first re...