CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF TEXTILE FABRICS, AND IN THE MANUFACTURE OF WEARING APPAREL FROM TEXTILE MATERIALS
Year: 1851

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, CHRISTOPHER
CROSS, of Farnworth, near Bolton, in the County of Lancaster, Cotton Spinner
and Manufacturer, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her present most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at
Westminster, the Eighth day of April, in the fourteenth year of Her reign,
and in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, did,
for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me, the said
Christopher Cross, Her special license, full power, sole privilege and authority,
that I, the said Christopher Cross, my exors, adññiors, and assigns, and such
others as I, the said Christopher Cross, my exors, admors, or assigns, should
at any time agree with, and no others, from time to time and at all times
during the term of years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make,
use, exercise, and vend, within England and Wales, and the Town of Berwick-
upon-Tweed, my Invention of "CERTAIN IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF
TEXTILE FABRICS, AND IN THE MANUFACTURE OF WEARING APPAREL FROM TEXTILE
MATERIALS;" in which said Letters Patent is contained a proviso that I, the
said Christopher Cross, shall cause a particular description of the nature
of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed,
to be enrolled in Her Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six calendar
months next and immediately after the date of the said in part recited

page_text: Letters Patent, as in and by the same, reference being thereunto had, will
more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Christopher Cross, do hereby declare that the nature of the said Invention, and
the manner in which the same is to be. performed, is particularly described
and ascertained in and by the Drawings hereto annexed, and the following
explanation thereof, that is to say:-
My Invention relates to an improvement upon a method at present practised
of manufacturing shapes by loom weaving, suitable for being made up into
coats, trousers, mantles, shirts, stays, and a variety of other articles of wearing
apparel, the principle of such known operation consisting in weaving the
intended shape with gores or full portions, instead of producing a desired
fullness by letting in the necessary parts by hand. This system of producing
woven shapes has been the subject, under certain modifications, of various
grants of Letters Patent, one of them to Jerome Andre Drien, for "Certain
Improvements in the Manufacture of Wearing Apparel, and in the Machinery
or Apparatus connected therewith," bearing date at Westminster, the First
day of August, One thousand eight hundred and forty-nine.
And in order that the application of my improvements thereon may be
perfectly understood, and the distinguishing features pointed out, I will, in the
first place, describe the general character of the operation as practised by
the aforesaid Jerome Andre Drien and others, and subsequently the addition
of my improvement, referring to the accompanying. illustrative Diagrams.
Suppose, for instance, it is desired to weave a shape suitable for being made
into an overcoat; in order to effect this, that side of the machine which shall
produce the portion of the shape intended to form the skirts must give off
more work than the centre part thereof, so that the required fullness and
folds may be obtained. The workman commences weaving as in the usual
mode of such operation, and continues passing his shuttle between the warp by
means of the picker handle, as in ordinary hand looms. This he continues
until it is necessary to commence making more work at one or the other side
of the loom, (suppose, in this instance, the right hand,) in which case he may
be imagined to have arrived at the part represented by the line a, a, b,
Diagram No. 1; he will then commence inserting the weft thread by means of
a hand shuttle gradually nearer to the right-hand side of the loom, taking
it out between the lines 15, 14, 13, &c. (which represent the warp threads on
an exaggerated scale), one after the other towards the right-hand side, and
working so many courses of treadles at each of the said spaces as his

page_text: instructions may direct, and continuing thus until he shall have arrived at the
point c, the work as woven being in the meantime beaten up by the ordinary
method. A required gore or fullness will now have been manufactured within
the points a, b, c. Let it now be considered necessary to weave the whole
width of the shape; the reed is brought forward, so as to carry with it
the woven gore, and bring its side a", c, parallel with the other part of the
work and with the face of the reed, and the whole is secured in that position
by means of a suitable taking-up apparatus. Diagram No. 2 represents this
position of the partly woven shape. After this the weft is thrown by the
picker handle across the whole of the warps until another gore or fullness is to
be commenced. During the weaving of the gore, as above described, the
warp threads have been shed uniformly, as in ordinary weaving, presenting
across their whole width two ranges of threads; the workman has therefore
been obliged to take out the hand shuttle between two of them; thus, in
the Diagram No. 3, in weaving the gore above described he has arrested the
shuttle between 15 and 14, &c., and drawn it out between those threads, thus
involving the necessity of a strict attention, so as to insure the proper limited
throw of the weft; and in order to assist him in this written instructions are
furnished, stating the consecutive situations at which the weft is to be removed
and the corresponding number of picks to be made. According to my improve-
ments I obviate these inconveniences by causing those threads which are not
intended to interweave with the weft to fail in opening a shed, thereby pointing
out, by a self-acting process, the width to which the weaving is to extend. In
order to effect this I connect the warp threads to a jacquard or equivalent appa-
ratus by any of the methods commonly adopted in using such machinery; and
supposing the shapes represented at the before mentioned Diagram No. 1 to be
required, the operation will be as follows:-The cards are to be pierced or the
equivalent apparatus so arranged as to shed the warp (according to the fabric
required) across the whole width thereof until the weaving has been carried
to the line a, a, 6; here the gore or fullness commences, and the cards or
equivalent apparatus must be so pierced or otherwise arranged as to fail
in bringing the necessary parts into action for shedding the warp, say from 14
to 37; the other threads, however, being operated upon as in ordinary weaving,
will be suitably disposed for the production of cloth, and the section thereof
will be as at Diagram No. 4. This arrangement having been accomplished,
the shuttle may be passed through the required space from 1 to 14, the end of
the throw being pointed out by the termination of the opened shed, without
reference to other instructions. The warp threads are now again to be shed,

page_text: as in ordinary weaving, the cards or equivalent apparatus again failing to lift
those situate from 14 to 37, and the shuttle thrown back towards the right
hand. After this the cards or equivalent apparatus may, for a certain number
of picks, open a shed composed of all the warp threads, so as to weave the
entire width thereof, and then, after the manner already described, shed those
represented by 1 to 12 only, as in Diagram No. 5, thus effecting an extra
portion of weaving to constitute a decreased length of gore, and so on until the
entire fullness shall have been accomplished. By this mode of operation it will
be observed that the workman is relieved from the duty of regulating the
number and order of short picks, and has merely to attend to the operations of
weaving an ordinary fabric, the motions of the loom pointing out by the
shedding of the warp how far the weft is to extend at each pick, the arrange-
ment of jacquard cards or the equivalent apparatus being, in fact, self-acting
instructions to the weaver. The method of mounting the warp threads, the
mode of taking up the woven work, and the operations generally, may be
effected as commonly practised in weaving stays with gores therein, or as
described in the Specification of the aforesaid Jerome Andre Drien, and
motion communicated to the jacquard or its equivalent by any method usually
adopted when such apparatus is employed for shedding the warp. It will be
evident also that two or more sets of warps may be employed, so as to weave
more than one-fold cloth, as is now practised in the weaving of stays and
other garment shapes.
In the foregoing description I have mentioned the warp threads which are
to fail in interweaving as being kept down; a similar effect, however, will be
produced if they be caused to occupy one line in the top range, the only
difference being that supposing an ordinary jacquard apparatus employed, the
cards must be so pierced as to miss all those needles belonging to the threads
to be raised, thereby leaving their respective hooks to be lifted by the action
of the "griff." As the warp threads which are not intended to be interwoven
with the weft, in order to produce gores, are according to my improvements
restrained from opening a shed, it will be evident that a shuttle may be
thrown from side to side of the loom, that is to say, from box to box, with an
uniform action, thereby admitting of the application of power to the manu-
facture; in such case, however, instead of the method usually adopted for
taking up the work, namely, the separate attachment of straps, &c., to various
parts of the width of the woven shape, a regular winding-on motion must be
applied. This may be accomplished as described in the Specification of the
aforesaid Jerome Andre Drien, by causing the work roller to be of irregular

page_text: diameter, so that its periphery shall be of such unequal dimensions that the
woven shape when coiled around it shall correspond thereto; or instead of this
a work roller as used in ordinary looms may be employed, between which and
the manufactured shape a coil of cloth shall be wound, having strips of india-
rubber or other suitable substance attached thereto, in such a form as to con-
stitute projections which shall increase the diameter of the roller at situations
corresponding to the fullness produced by the woven gores, the coil of cloth
and its protuberances thus forming a packing varying in thickness, so as to
effect a taking up of the shape in greater quantity at one portion of its width
than at another. The looms to be employed may be of any ordinary con-
struction, and although I have particularly mentioned that description of
apparatus known as the jacquard, I do not confine myself thereto, as there
are other known combinations of mechanical parts (endless chains and tappets,
for instance,) which act as equivalents thereto, and will answer the purpose as
a medium for effecting the desired operation. I would also observe, that if
desired the weaving of gores may be employed in conjunction with an Inven-
tion for which Letters Patent were granted to me, bearing date the fifth day
of September, One thousand eight hundred and fifty, the Specification of
which Patent was duly enrolled.
By the aforesaid Invention, shapes for being made up into wearing apparel
are produced by forming irregular quantities of work in the direction of the
width of the loom, that is, at right angles to the warp; it will be obvious that
by operating upon that plan, and simultaneously effecting the weaving of
gores, that a greater variety of shape may be produced. Although such weaving
of gores in combination with my said Invention may be accomplished by the
method now practised, yet any present improvement will materially facilitato
the operation.
Having thus described and ascertained the nature of my said Invention,
and the manner in which the same is to be performed, I wish it to bo
understood that I claim, as secured to me under the above in part recited
Letters Patent, the application of a jacquard or other suitable apparatus for
preventing certain of the warp threads from opening a shed, when shapes for
being made into articles of wearing apparel are produced by the weaving of
irregular quantities of work in the direction of the length of warp threads.
In witness whereof, I, the said Christopher Cross, have hereunto set
my hand and seal, this Seventh day of October, in the year of our
Lord One thousand eight hundred and fifty-one.
CHRISTOPHER (L.s.) CROSS.

page_text: AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the Seventh day of October, in the
year of our Lord 1851, the aforesaid Christopher Cross came before our said
Lady the Queen in Her Chancery, and acknowledged the Specification*afore-
said, and all and every thing therein contained and specified, in form above
written. And also the Specification aforesaid was stamped according to the
tenor of the Statute made for that purpose.
Enrolled the Eighth day of October, in the year of our Lord One
thousand eight hundred and fifty-one.