page_title: Carding
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Carding / History
caption_attribution_description: Picture number:10419132 Credit:Science Museum/Science&amp;Society Picture Library Image Caption: Engraving by Poisson after a painting by Pierre Sonnerat (1748-1814), showing "a man carding raw cotton". (Carding is using a card or comb to clean or disentangle the fibres prior to weaving. Carding is an approximate description for this. The actual word for this profession, according to the author who is uploading it, is Dhunuri in eastern India). Illustration from Sonnerat's 'Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, fait par ordre du roi, depuis 1774 jusqu'en 1781' ('Voyage to the East Indies and China, made by order of the king, from 1774 to 1781'), published in 1782. In Collection of: Science &amp; Society Picture Library Subject(s) &gt; Trade &amp; Industry &gt; Textile Industry
context_page_description: Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with card clothing. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.
  The word is derived from the Latin carduus meaning thistle or teasel, as dried vegetable teasels were first used to comb the raw wool.
context_section_description: Science historian Joseph Needham ascribes the invention of bow-instruments used in textile technology to India. The earliest evidence for using bow-instruments for carding comes from India (2nd century CE). These carding devices, called kaman (bow) and dhunaki, would loosen the texture of the fibre by the means of a vibrating string.
  At the turn of the eighteenth century, wool in England was being carded using pairs of hand cards, in a two-stage process: 'working' with the cards opposed and 'stripping' where they are in parallel.
  In 1748 Lewis Paul of Birmingham, England, invented two hand driven carding machines. The first used a coat of wires on a flat table moved by foot pedals. This failed. On the second, a coat of wire slips was placed around a card which was then wrapped around a cylinder.Daniel Bourn obtained a similar patent in the same year, and probably used it in his spinning mill at Leominster, but this burnt down in 1754.  The invention was later developed and improved by Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton.  Arkwright's second patent (of 1775) for his carding machine was subsequently declared invalid (1785) because it lacked originality.
  From the 1780s, the carding machines were set up in mills in the north of England and mid-Wales. Priority was given to cotton but woollen fibres were being carded in Yorkshire in 1780. With woollen, two carding machines were used: the first or the scribbler opened and mixed the fibres, the second or the condenser mixed and formed the web.  The first in Wales was in a factory at Dolobran near Meifod in 1789.  These carding mills produced yarn particularly for the Welsh flannel industry.
  In 1834 James Walton invented the first practical machines to use a wire card. He patented this machine and also a new form of card with layers of cloth and rubber. The combination of these two inventions became the standard for the carding industry, using machines first built by Parr, Curtis and Walton in Ancoats, and from 1857 by Jams Walton & Sons at Haughton Dale.
  By 1838, the Spen Valley, centred on Cleckheaton had at least 11 card clothing factories and by 1893, it was generally accepted as the card cloth capital of the world, though by 2008 only two manufacturers of metallic and flexible card clothing remained in England, Garnett Wire Ltd. dating back to 1851 and Joseph Sellers & Son Ltd established in 1840.
  Baird from Scotland took carding to Leicester, Massachusetts in the 1780s. In the 1890s, the town produced one-third of all hand and machine cards in North America. John and Arthur Slater, from Saddleworth went over to work with Slater in 1793.
  A 1780s scribbling mill would be driven by a water wheel. There were 170 scribbling mills around Leeds at that time. Each scribbler would require 15–45 horsepower (11–34 kW) to operate. Modern machines are driven by belting from an electric motor or an overhead shaft via two pulleys.
caption: A "Cotton carder". An old engraving copied from artist Pierre Sonnerat's 1782 illustration.
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