Lace machine
Lace machines took over the commercial manufacture of lace during the nineteenth century. History. The stocking frame was a mechanical weft-knitting knitting machine used in the textile industry. It was invented by William Lee of Calverton near Nottingham in 1589. Framework knitting, was the first major stage in the mechanisation of the textile industry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was adapted to knit cotton, do ribbing and by 1800, with the introduction of dividers (divider bar) as a lace making machine. Bobbinet machines were invented in 1808 by John Heathcoat. He studied the hand  movements of a Northamptonshire manual lace maker and reproduced them in the roller-locker machine. The 1809 version of this machine (patent no. 3216) became known as the "Old Loughborough", it was wide and was designed for use with cotton. The Old Loughborough became the standard lacemaking machine, particularly the 1820 form known as the Circular producing two-twist plain net. The smooth, unpatterned tulle produced on these machines was on a par with real, handmade lace net. Heathcoat's bobbinet machine is so ingeniously designed that the ones used today have suffered little alteration. However during the next 30  years inventors were patenting improvements to their machines. The ones that stand out are the Pusher machine, the Levers machine (now spelled Leavers) and the Nottingham lace curtain machine. Each of these developed into separate machines. Others were the Traverse Warp machine and the Straight Bolt machine. Typology. Stocking frame. The stocking frame, invented in 1589 by Lee, consisted of a stout wooden frame. It did straight knitting not tubular knitting. It had a separate needle for each loop- these were low carbon steel bearded needles where the tips were reflexed and could be depressed onto a hollow closing the  loop. The needle were supported on a "needle bar" that passed back and forth, to and from the operator. The beards were simultaneously depressed by a "presser bar". The first machine had 8 needles per inch and was suitable for worsted: The next version had 16 needles per inch and was suitable for silk. Warp frame. This includes the later Raschel machine Bobbinet. The bobbinet machine, invented by John Heathcoat in Loughborough, Leicestershire, in 1808, makes a perfect copy of Lille or East Midlands net (fond simple, a six-sided net with four sides twisted, two crossed). The machine uses  flat round bobbins in carriages to pass through and round vertical threads. Pusher. In 1812 Samual Clark and James Mart constructed a machine that was capable of working a pattern and net at the same time. A "pusher" operated each bobbin and carriage independently allowing almost unlimited designs and styles. The machine however was slow, delicate, costly and could produce only short "webs" of about two by four yards. The machine was modified by J. Synyer in 1829. and by others before. Production had its heydays in the 1860s and ceased around 1870–1880. Leavers. John Levers adapted Heathcoat's Old  Loughborough machine while working in a garret on Derby Road Nottingham in 1813. The name of the machine was the Leavers machine (the 'a' was added to aid pronunciation in France). The original machine made net but it was discovered that the Jacquard apparatus (invented in France for weaving looms by J M Jacquard in about 1800) could be adapted to it. From 1841 lace complete with pattern, net and outline could be made on the Leavers machine. The Leavers machine is probably the most versatile of all machines for making patterned lace. Nottingham lace curtain machine. The lace curtain  machine, invented by John Livesey in Nottingham in 1846 was another adaptation of John Heathcoat's bobbinet machine. It made the miles of curtaining which screened Victorian and later windows. Barmen. The Barmen machine was developed in the 1890s in Germany from a braiding machine. Its bobbins imitate the movements of the bobbins of the hand-made lace maker and it makes perfect copies of Torchon and the simpler hand-made laces. It can only make one width at a time, and has a maximum width of about 120 threads. Embroidery machines. These produce "Chemical lace" or "Burnt out lace