IMPROVEMENTS IN KNITTING, AND IN MACHINERY THEREFOR
Year: 1861

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Alfred Vincent Newton at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 16th
August 1861. A communication from abroad by James Green Wilson,
of the City of New York, in the United States of America.
I, ALFRED VINCENT NEWTON, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery Lane,
in the County of Middlesex, Mechanical Draughtsman, do hereby declare the
nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN KNITTING, AND IN
MACHINERY THEREFOR," to be as follows:-
This Invention relates to the knitting of stockings or other articles of
irregular form upon a circular or straight series of needles, by bringing the
whole series of needles at once into connection with their driving or operating
mechanism, and throwing any number at a time out of connection with such
mechanism, as the form of the article to be knitted may require, leaving all
the others in operation, and allowing the knitting to proceed on any number
of immediately adjacent needles at once with a separate yarn to each needle.
For this purpose it is proposed to employ one or more rotating cylinders or
drums, having openings in their peripheries, which regulate the throwing of
the needles into and out of connection. In a straight knitting machine, a
rotating cylinder of the whole length of the series of needles is used, or two or
more rotating cylinders placed in line with each other, the same being
arranged parallel with the needles, and extending the whole length of the
saries of needles; but for a circular machine there are employed three or
more rotating drums, having the longitudinal profiles of their peripheries of

page_text: such arc form that the said drums will admit of being so arranged as com-
pletely to encircle the needle ring, or the circular series of needles. In
combination with such rotating cylinder or cylinders, or drums, the several
needles are provided with certain attachments, which will bear against the
exteriors of the said cylinder, cylinders, or drums, to keep the needles in con-
nection with their driving or operating mechanism, but will drop into the holes
in the said cylinder, cylinders, or drums, to let the needles opposite the said
holes come out of connection with such mechanism; or the needles may be in
connection when the holes in the cylinder, cylinders, or drums are presented to
the aforesaid attachments, and out of connection when the said attachments
bear against the periphery or peripheries of the said cylinder, cylinders,
or drums.
The Invention also relates to a substitute for the pressers or beaters
employed in some kinds of knitting machines to operate between the needles,
for the purposes of holding the work on the needles while the last completed
stitches are being taken over the points of the needles, either by the movement
of the needles themselves, or by stitch hooks, such substitute consisting of a
pad of india-rubber, or other suitable moderately soft or yielding substance, so
applied as to press the work at the proper time against the edge of the needle
ring or needle bar close to the needles. This pad will work with a simple
reciprocating movement, and saves much of the mechanism commonly used in
producing the compound movement, which is generally necessary for the
pressers or beaters.