AN ENTIRE NEW MACHINE FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAKING ALL SORTS OF CARDS FOR CARDING WOOL, COTTON, AND ALL OTHER MATERIALS CAPABLE OF BEING CARDED; AND FOR DRESSING WOOLLEN CLOTHS
Year: 1799

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, wc, CLEMENT
SHARP, of the Parish of Saint Luke, in the County of Middlesex, Merchant,
and AMOS WHITTEMORE, of the same place, Card Maker, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at
Westminster, the Twenty-sixth day of June, in the thirty-ninth year of His
reign, give and grant unto us, the said Clement Sharp and'Amos Whittemore,
His especial licence that we, the said Clement Sharp and Amos Whittemore,
during the term of years therein mentioned, should and lawfully might
use, exercise, and vend, within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-
upon-Tweed, our Invention of "AN ENTIRE NEW MACHINE FOR THE PURPOSE OF
MAKING ALL SORTS OF CARDS FOR CARDING WOOL, COTTON, AND ALL OTHER MATERIALS
CAPABLE OF BEING CARDED; AND FOR DRESSING WOOLLEN CLOTHS;" in which said
Letters Patent there is contained a proviso obliging us, the said Clement
Sharp and Amos Whittemore, by an instrument in writing under our hands
and seals, to cause a particular description of the nature of our said Invention,
and in what manner the same is to be performed, to be inrolled in His.
Majesty's High Court of Chancery within one calendar month after the date
of the said recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same (relation being
thereto had) may more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, we, the said
Clement Sharp and Amos Whittemore, do hereby declare that our said
Invention is described in manner following (that is to say) :-.

page_text: This Invention consists in making, by a machine, all sorts and sizes of cards
for carding of wool, cotton, and all other materials capable of being carded, and
for dressing woollen cloths, for which purpose until now there had never been
a machine in Great Britain, and is still thought to be impossible. The mode
in which cards are at present made viz, by first piercing all the holes in the
piece of leather, and preparing the staples to be put into them singly by hand,
must necessarily be confined to cards of a much smaller size than may be
made by the machine. The crook in the staples is always liable to be altered,
particularly in putting them through stout leather, which causes the cards to
work unevenly, at the same time the holes in the leather must be larger than
the staples, which, not being properly supported, lose a great part of their
elasticity. The cards made by the machine are free from these imperfections,
as they may be made of any size, with leather of any thickness, the holes the
size of the staples, which are all crooked exactly alike in any part and to any
figure, with the greatest uniformity, and to a degree of fineness hitherto never
attempted by hand, to the great improvement of the woollen and cotton
manufacturers. The powers of the machine are here specified. The leaf or
piece of leather is put into the stretching frame, and, by its different motions,
every part of it is brought alternately to a given point in the centre of the
machine, which, if a tracer would draw upon.it any pattern which is or can be
made, it is then set to the desired pattern, and one end of the leaf brought
to the centre. On the machine being put in motion a pair of holes are
made in the leaf; at the same time the proper length of wire is brought
forward and seized by its middle, when it is cut off and bent into the shape
of a staple, then conducted through the holes in the leaf where it is crooked,
let lose, and forced up to its place. The leaf-is then shifted the space for the
next staple, and the several movements again take place, and are repeated
until a row in width is compleat, when it is shifted the distance for the next
row, which is compleated in a similar manner, and so on until the card is
finished. In constructing this machine, it is necessary to premise that the
materials of which it is composed, and the mode by which the several move-
ments are obtained, are not essential to the Invention, but must be left to the
judgment of the artist. As many cylinders of carding machines are about
hirty inches wide, the following dimensions are suited to a machine
for making cards of that size, or any that are less: A-frame of iron, or
other metal or materials serving as the base of the machine, will be about
seven feet long, and twenty inches wide, on the ends of which are fixed
two arms about two feet high, inclining to the back front about the angle
of sixty degrees. The tops of them are curved back about two inches, and
.

page_text: at the ends are holes to receive a bar, having at one end of it a¸ wheel:
fixed with saw, teeth, which is furnished with clicks, and upon the same, bar,
is fixed, near each end (where it works in the arms) a small roller, with pliable
pieces, which connect them to a bar which hangs against and slides. up and
down upon the arms, but is prevented from moving sideways. Near the tops
of the arms is a rail to connect them together. Against this rail lies the
top bar of a frame called the carriage, which is about thrée feet long,; and is
fastened to a bar the length of the base on which it slides. To this bar are;
fixed the racks or other contrivances to give it motion from side to side
within the carriage; and suspended from the hanging bar is the stretching
frame, which is about two inches shorter, and half the width of the carriage,
having pieces at each corner to lie above and below the sides of the carriage.
to guide it in its motion up and down as the top bar is moved by its wheel,"
and sideways by the heart motion, as it is called, (to which it is kept up by a
spring) which gives the twill or other pattern to the card as it is shifted at the
end of each row. At the middle of the base, and close to the front edge, is
placed a stage, about a foot high and six inches wide, to support a plate, to be:
hereafter described. At one end of the base is an upright of the same height
with an arm reaching to the back front, upon which is jointed the lever with
the moving click for shifting the wheel. On the top bar, and in any convenient
part, is placed the standing click and the lever which communicates the
motion to the racks, if that mode of shifting the carriage be preferred. In
the top of the stage and upright are holes for the main arbour to work in (to
be turned by any kind of machinery), on which are fixed a number of single
teeth or knobs to give motion to the several parts of the machine. The plate:
above mentioned is about seven inches long and six inches wide, and is fixed
upon the stage. The pricker, having two points to pierce the leaf, is about'
beneath it, and reaches.
eight inches long, lying parallel with the plate, but
from the front of the arbour backwards to the stretching frame. It is jointed to
an upright piece which works between centres on the base, and is forced back-
by one of the knobs on the arbour, and forward by a spring; in its motion the
end is raised up by the inclined plain upon its under side sliding upon a bar,
that when it had done its office it may fall out of the way of the other instru-
ments. On one side of the plate is a contrivance to bring forward the wire for
the staple, which may be done by levers, or pliers, or tongs, or rollers. The
latter we think best, and shall describe their application:-The rollers lie on
the plate at right angles with the main arbour, and are about six inches long,
a wheel on which gives them the necessary motion by having teeth for about
one quarter of its circumference only. These take into a small wheel on one

page_text: of the rollers, which drive each other. The wire passing between them is con-
ducted through holes before the fixed side of a pair of shears into the tongs,
which are fixed to a thin piece about five inches long, and two 'inches wide,
sliding between two pieces in the middle of the plate. The back end of the
tongs are the breadth of the staple, and about half an inch thick, having a slit
perpendicular to the plate, through which a thin piece, called the crowner;
passes; thero is also a slit parallel with the plate, which makes an opening
for the wire. On the front of the tongs plate is fixed a piece like a gallows,
the back leg of which covers the end of the tongs, and is the moving half of
them. Against this piece the crowner, having a small notch in its end, holds
the wire as in a vice, when it is cut off by the moveable part of the shears
which lies under the plate, and. is jointed and moved as the pricker is, the
back end being crooked upwards to correspond with the fixed part. The
wire is thus held in the tongs until the staplers are forced. back and give it
the proper shape. The staplers are a pair of bars jointed upon a plate of the
same width as the tongs plate, and sliding between the same side pieces; it has
an opening in the middle to let it pass the crowner, which works within it on
the tongs plate. The back or working ends of the staplers are bent down
to correspond with the tongs, and have grooves to let the wire lie in. These are
closed by a spring between their front ends when their plate is forced back-
wards by its knob on the arbour, which bends the two sides of the wire into
the shape of a staple, when they are drawn forwards by their plate spring and
the conductors, which. are two small levers fixed to a bar, which is jointed
to supports fixed on the plate, and moved up and down by their knob on the
arbour. The back ends have small grooves in which the ends of the staple lic
whilst the tongs are forced back by their knob on the arbour, and thus conduct
them into the holes prépared for them. The part of the staple which should
be crooked is now through the leaf, and upon the top of the anvil, against
the edge of which the holes are pierced. This is a bar about a foot long, set up
on end, and fixed to a support in the middle of the frame. The crookers are
small bars about three inches long, fixed to a bar which is jointed to the anvil
support, and to any convenient part at one end of the frame a little higher
than the anvil, and parallel with the front of the base. This is moved up and.
down by a lever acted upon by its knob on the arbour. The crookers nearly
touch the anvil, and have small holes-to-receive the ends-of-the-staple, which,..
by their motion, are crooked to the desired figure, when the moving part of
the tongs is lifted up by its lever, which is moved by its knob on the arbour,
and gives liberty to the crowner to shoot back and force up the staple to its
proper place by means of its spring, and is then brought forward by its lever,

page_text: acted upon by a knob on the arbour, as the other levers are. The staple is
now complete and in its place, and the carriage is shifted the distance for the
next staple. The whole of these operations take place more than an hundred
times in one minute. To accomodate the machine to ribband cards or
filliting, the stretching frame and hanging bar are removed, and a small pair
of rollers are fitted to the carriage, which are moved by a band passing over a
pulley on the top bar, and another on the axis of one of the rollers. The
leather is put under a pulley fixed to the floor between the rollers, and over a
pulley fixed above the machine, where a weight is suspended to it to keep
it tight against the anvil where it is pierced and stapled as the other
cards are.
In witness whereof, we, the said Clement Sharp and Amos Whitte-
more, have hereunto set our hands and seals, this Twenty-fourth day
of July, in the year of our Lord One thousand seven hundred and
ninety-nine.
Inrolled the same Twenty-fourth day of July, in the year above written.