IMPROVED TAPES FOR VENETIAN WINDOW BLINDS, FOR RIBBONS, HAT BANDS, AND SIMILAR ARTICLES, AND FOR IMPROVED LOOMS AND APPARATUS POR WEAVING THEM
Year: 1869

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Heywood, Fred Murphy,
and John Wild at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents,
with their Petition, on the 17th March 1869.
We, JAMES HEYWOOD, of Tonge, FRED MURPHY, of Middleton, and
JOHN WILD, of Tonge, all in the County of Lancaster, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVED TAPES FOR
VENETIAN WINDOW BLINDS, FOR RIBBONS, HAT BANDS, AND SIMILAR ARTICLES,
AND FOR IMPROVED LOOMS AND APPARATUS POR WEAVING THEM," to be as
follows:-
The laths of venetian window blinds are at present held in their places
by small cross pieces of tape or cord sewed or stitched to the tapes, and
many inconveniences frequently occur by the severance of the cross
pieces from the tapes, and to obviate these defects we form our tapes
with tags or holders woven in the body of the tape for holding the laths,
and thus prevent the liability of breakage. The tags are formed either
of cords or small tapes and are woven in either in a line or at each side
of the tape in a zig-zag direction, and the cords can be woven in either
in an ordinary swivel loom or more efficiently in our improved loom
hereafter described, in which we also weave ribbons, hat bands, and

page_text: similar articles having plain terrys or ribs and other terrys with fancy
patterns according to the design, each with its perfect selvage. We
weave our improved tapes for Venetian blinds in wide looms having a
number of shuttles one for each tape and for the tapes having one tape
tag woven in we employ two warp beams one for the tape itself and one
for the tag, and for the tapes having tags at each side in a zig-zag
direction we use three warp beams one for the tape and two for the tags,
and for making the sheds of the numerous tapes we employ an ordinary
jacquard apparatus. An important part of our improvements in this
description of loom consists in giving a postive motion to each of the
shuttles, and for this purpose we fix in each shuttle a rack gearing into
toothed wheels working on studs fixed to the reed cap and gearing into
a long rack extending the length of the lathe and having to-and-fro
motion imparted to it by cams or tappets on a toothed wheel driven by
another toothed wheel on the crank shaft of the loom, which cams or
tappets communicate by a lever and rod to a stud in the middle of the
long rack, which as it moves to and fro causes each shuttle to pass to and
fro through the shed of its corresponding warp. Or, the long rack may
be moved to and fro by a lever on the rocking shaft worked by cams or
tappets on the toothed wheel driven from the crank shaft. For holding
the bobbin in the shuttle at its proper degree of tension we employ a
small spring placed transversely to the bobbin and in contact with the
thread, and for enabling the tape and tags to have their proper selvage
we form a slit in the side of the eye and use an elastic band having a
head at one end, and the thread from the bobbin passes through one end
of the eye through a hole in the head and then through the other end
of the eye to the warp, and this elastic band keeps the weft tight to its
work both for the wider width of the tape and the narrow width of the
tags. For weaving the tape with tags on each side we weave a length of
tape from the warp on the tape beam and then this weaving is
discontinued and some inches of tag is woven from the warp from one
of the tag beams, after which the ground warp of the tape is brought
back and the tape is again woven the required distance and then some
inches of tag is woven from the warp on the other tag beam, and the
tape afterwards woven until another tag is required and so the operations
are repeated and these tags are kept in position until they arrive at the
winding on beam by means of two rods one for each half of the tags,
and when the tape is woven with the tags in line only one tag beam is
used. When the tags are formed of cords we weave two cords in the

page_text: tape one near each selvage, the cords being on separate beams. When a
length of tape and cord is woven the required distance we draw out a
length of cord from the beam and place it on a rod the size of the tag
and continue weaving in cord with the warp of the tape and after a
certain distance is woven the other cord is drawn out and placed on a
rod to form another tag, and so the operations are repeated. The elastic
bands in the shuttles keep the weft tight and enable the selvages to be
properly made and as the shuttles are moved by racks and toothed
wheels they move with certainty and enable a long winding-on beam to
be used for all the tapes, and also enable the warp beams to be weighted
more efficiently than has hitherto been attained in this description of
weaving, and therefore ribbons, hat bands, and similar articles having
plain terrys or ribs and other terrys with fancy patterns according to the
design can be woven each with its proper selvage, the whole number
of the tapes or ribbons are wound on one winding-on beam which is
turned by any of the taking up motions used in the ordinary power
loom.