john Kay and the flying shuttle 1733 The Lunar Society bringing together brilliant minds Send to Kindle John Kay, inventor of the ‘Flying Shuttle’, held in his hands, the first flutterings of what would become, the Industrial Revolution. John Kay was a man whose entire young life had been exposed to the woolen industry. He knew the problems and the pitfalls of mechanization but could see the great need for advancement in the industry. So what about John Kay and the Flying Shuttle? He was born in Bury in Lancashire in 1704, the son of a woolen manufacturer. He became manager of one of his father’s mills and soon developed skills as a machinist and engineer, modifying machines as necessary. In 1733 he patented the ‘New engine for opening and dressing wool’, this machine included the famous ‘flying shuttle’. John Kay The flying shuttle was a simple device that had huge impact The shuttle was only one part of a textile loom but it was the part that had to be physically thrown backwards and forwards by the weaver as it carries the weft through the warp.

John Kay’s shuttle was shot out of a box, backwards and forwards, carrying the weft without the weaver having to come into contact with the shuttle at all. It had an enormous impact on the woolen industry. The owners loved it because it sped up the process and they could reduce the number of people they employed. The workers were impoverished by it. John Kay was the subject of many personal attacks upon himself as he struggled for financial and literal survival. Find out more about this aspect of John Kay’s life here. For John Kay himself it brought misery. Manufacturers refused to pay him royalties on his invention and so he took his looms to France, here alas, they were not overly impressed by John Kay’s invention and he had to negotiate hard with the French government to get them to buy his technology. John Kay hardly ever returned to England after 1756 becoming domiciled with his family in France. The Flying Shuttle John Kay and the flying shuttle sped up the production of cloth so much that spun yarn was hard to come by. Inventions beget inventions and so it was with the flying shuttle, the ‘spinning jenny’ was born out of the necessity to produce more thread and so the Industrial Revolution kept revolving.

John Kay died in 1779, still fighting for the money he was owed by manufacturers and governments alike. Interested in finding out more about the Industrial Revolution? Click here to go to our Timeline of the Industrial Revolution. The John Kay Memorial Bury The Open Door Web Site : History : The Industrial Revolution : The Textile Industry : John Kay and the Flying Shuttle Grimshaw's factory in Manchester was destroyed by an angry mob of weavers and spinners. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. 1790 Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a device using punched card to weave complex designs. 1806 English textile mills were forced to close down as supplies of cotton from the US South ran short. 1800 Horrocks invented the speed batton 1810 TWO CENTURIES OF REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE Custom Search The Industrial Revolution John Kay and the Flying Shuttle Before the invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1733, it was only possible for cloth to be woven up to a maximum of the width of a man's body, across his arms. This was because he had to pass the shuttle backwards and forwards, from hand to hand.

A weaver using a hand loom John Kay's invention allowed the shuttle, containing the thread, to be shot backwards and forwards across a much wider bed. The flying shuttle also allowed the thread to be woven at a faster rate, thus enabling the process of weaving to become faster. Shuttle with bobin - released into the Public Domain by Audrius Meskauskas This image was provided by Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council for use in the Cotton Town digitisation project: John Kay was the son of a wool manufacturer in Bury, Lancashire. He was just a young man when he became the manager of one of his father's mills. Kay developed skills as a machinist and engineer. He made many improvements to the machines in the mill. In May 1733, Kay patented his "New Engine of Machine for Opening and Dressing Wool". This machine included the Flying Shuttle. Before the invention of the Flying Shuttle, weavers had to pass the shuttle through the warp threads by hand. Kay's invention put the shuttle on wheels and controlled it with a driver. The weaver operated the shuttle by pulling a cord attached to the driver.

When this cord was pulled to the left, the driver caused the shuttle to shoot ("fly") through the warp in the same direction. Pulling the cord to the right sent the shuttle back. The Flying Shuttle was able to do the work of two people even more quickly. In 1753, an angry mob of weavers, afraid of the competition, wrecked Kay's house and destroyed his looms. However, since it halved labour costs, the textile industry was quick to adopt Kay's invention, but it was not so keen to pay him anything for it. The manufacturers formed an association which refused to pay Kay any royalties. Kay lost all of his money in legal battles to defend his patent. He eventually moved to France where he is thought to have died a poor man. The Open Door Web Site is non-profit making. Your donations help towards the cost of maintaining this free service on-line.

Donate to the Open Door Web Site using PayPal The Open Door Team 2017 Any questions or problems regarding this site should be addressed to the webmaster © Shirley Burchill, Nigel Hughes, Richard Gale, Peter Price and Keith Woodall 2017 Footnote : As far as the Open Door team can ascertain the images shown on this page are in the Public Domain. The Cotton Industry and the Industrial Revolution - History Learning Site Home » Britain 1700 to 1900 » Industrial Revolution » The Cotton Industry and the Industrial Revolution The Cotton Industry and the Industrial Revolution Citation: C N Trueman "The Cotton Industry and the Industrial Revolution" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 31 Mar 2015. 16 Aug 2016. The United Kingdom experienced a huge growth in the cotton industry during the Industrial Revolution. The factories that were required to produce cotton became a legacy of the time – Sir Richard Arkwright at Cromford built the world’s first true factory to produce cotton. With an ever increasing population and an ever-expanding British Empire, there was a huge market for cotton and cotton factories became the dominant feature of the Pennines.

The north of England had many areas around the Pennines that were perfect for the building of cotton factories. The original factories needed a constant power supply and the fast flowing rivers in the Pennines provided this. In later years coal provided this power – this was also found in large quantities in the north of England. The factories also needed a work force and the population in the northern cities provided this, especially as many families had been engaged in the domestic system prior to the industrialisation that occurred in the north. There was therefore a ready supply of skilled weavers and spinners. Liverpool, a rapidly expanding port, also provided the region with a means of importing raw cotton from the southern states of America and exporting finished cotton abroad. The internal market was well served with decent transport means, especially when the railways extended from London to the north. Of great importance to the cotton industry was the repeal in 1774 of a heavy tax that was charged on cotton thread and cloth made in Britain. Combined with all the above factors were numerous inventions that transformed the British cotton industry and helped to make the UK the ‘workshop of the world’. In 1733, John Kay invented the ‘Flying Shuttle’.

This invention allowed wider cloth to be weaved and at a faster speed than before. Kay used his knowledge as a weaver to develop this machine. In 1765, James Hargreaves invented the ‘Spinning Jenny’. Within twenty years the number of threads one machine could spin rose from six to eighty. In 1769, Richard Arkwright patented the ‘Water Frame’. This, as its title would suggest, used water as a source of power but it also produced a better thread than the spinning jenny. In 1779, Crompton’s ‘Mule’ was invented. This combined the good points of the water frame and the spinning jenny and resulted in a machine that could spin a cotton thread better than any other machine. In 1781 Boulton and Watt invented a steam engine that was easy to use within a cotton factory. By the 1790’s, the steam engine was used in increasing numbers in cotton factories. Therefore there was less reliance of water and the availability of water. Factories tended to be built nearer coalmines as a result.

In the 1800’s the industry witnessed a spread in the use of chemical bleaches and dyes, which meant that bleaching, dyeing and printing could all be done in the same factory. In 1812, the first decent weaving machine, Robert’s Power Loom, was invented. This meant that all stages in the making of cotton could now be done in one factory. All these inventions had a major impact in the amount of cotton produced in Great Britain – and the fortune this represented. In 1770, the cotton was worth around £600,000. By 1805, this had grown to £10,500,000 and by 1870, £38,800,000. By comparison, over the same hundred years, wool had increased in value from £7,000,000 to £25,400,000 and silk from £1,000,000 to £8,000,000.

In Manchester alone, the number of cotton mills rose dramatically in a very short space of time: from 2 in 1790 to 66 in 1821. While some made fortunes from the cotton factories, those who worked in them had no union protection against excessive work, dangerous conditions and low pay – this was to come much later. While a visitor to Arkwright’s Cromford factory described the building as “magnificent” in 1790, conditions inside for a worker were less than magnificent. However, Arkwright was considered to be a decent owner who did go some way to looking after his workforce. Arkwright built cottages for his workers, but they were built so close to the factories that developed Cromford that if a worker had any time off, he or she would not be in a position to get away from the environment in which they worked. He also built a Sunday school for the children who worked at Cromford mill and his best workers were rewarded with bonuses of dairy cows. Arkwright also rented out allotments at cheap rates. But not all factory owners were like Arkwright. It was also profitable to employ children to do work, as they were cheaper than adults.

They were especially useful at crawling under machines to clear up fallen cotton thread and tying together loose ends. With no birth certificates in the early years of factories, no factory manager would find himself blamed for employing underage children, as many children themselves did not know their age. Even when birth certificated were introduced in 1836, child labour did not stop. The hours that children worked in textile factories started to change in 1833 when an Act of Parliament was passed. The 1833 Factory Act forbade the employment of children under nine years of age in all textile mills (excluding lace and silk). Children under thirteen were not allowed to work for more than nine hours a day and not more than 48 hours in one week. Under eighteens were not allowed to work for more than 12 hours a day and not more than 69 hours in a week. They were also not allowed to work at night. Children employed in a factory between the ages of nine and eleven also had to have two hours of education each day.

This act was built on in 1844 with another Factory Act that restricted children aged between 8 and 13 to half-day working (6.5 hours) which had to be completed either before or after noon – the working time could not straddle midday. However, the law was very difficult to enforce, as there were few factory inspectors and those who were employed to do this work were poorly paid. There were also many parents who wanted their children to work and aided factory managers in bypassing this legislation. In 1847, another Factory Act stated that everyone under 18 and all women were only allowed to work a maximum of ten hours a day. John Kay and His Impact on Weaving In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle, a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution. Early Years Kay was born on June 17, 1704, in the Lancashire hamlet of Walmersley . His father Robert was a farmer and wool manufacturer. Robert died before John was born His mother was responsible for educating him until she remarried. John Kay was just a young man when he became the manager of one of his father's mills.

Kay developed skills as a machinist and engineer. He made many improvements to the machines in the mill. He apprenticed with a hand-loom reed maker. He designed a metal substitute for the natural reed that proved popular enough for him to sell throughout England. After travelling the country, making and fitting wire reeds, he returned to home and, on June 29, 1725, both he and his brother, William, married Bury women. The Flying Shuttle The flying shuttle was an improvement to looms that enabled weavers to weave faster. The original shuttle contained a bobbin on to which the weft (weaving term for the crossways yarn) yarn was wound. It was normally pushed from one side of the warp (weaving term for the series of yarns that extended lengthways in a loom) to the other side by hand. Large looms needed two weavers to throw the shuttle. The flying shuttle was thrown by a leaver that could be operated by one weaver. The shuttle was able to do the work of two people even more quickly.

In Bury, John Kay continued to design improvements to textile machinery; in 1730 he patented a cording and twisting machine for worsted. In 1753, Kay's home was attacked by textile workers who were angry that his inventions might take work away from them. Kay fled England for France where he died in poverty around 1780. Kay's invention paved the way for mechancal power looms, however, the technology would have to wait another 30 years before a power loom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1787. John Kay's son, Robert, stayed in Britain, and in 1760 developed the "drop-box", which enabled looms to use multiple flying shuttles at the same time, allowing multicolour wefts. His son John had long lived with his father in France. In 1782 he provided an account of his father's troubles to Richard Arkwright, who sought to highlight problems with patent defence in a parliamentary petition. In the 1840s, Thomas Sutcliffe (one of Kay's great-grandsons) campaigned to promote a Colchester heritage for Kay's family.

In 1846 he unsuccessfully sought a parliamentary grant for Kay's descendants (in compensation for his ancestor's treatment in England). He was inaccurate in the details of his grandfather's genealogy and story, and his "Fanciful and Erroneous Statements" were discredited by John Lord's detailed examination of primary sources. In Bury, Kay has become a local hero: there are still several pubs named after him, as are the Kay Gardens. The Industrial Revolution - Innovations Innovations of the Industrial Revolution Agricultural Revolution The Agricultural Revolution is the name given to the drastic changes in the farming process that occurred in the 1600's onwards. The spread-out, shared farms, common under the "open-field system" of cultivation, turned into more compact, but larger, farms. The many problems associated with open fields; the overgrazing of animals, difficulty in reaching consensus for change, and single herds that had led to a spread of animal diseases and uncontrollable breeding breeding; had all become generally solved ( Gernhard ). Farmers had discovered a crop rotation system that allowed them to forgo leaving up to half the land unused or fallow between each planting. Animal husbandry was becoming widely used.

This was just the beginning of the change, and many important players were able to create other innovations for the farm that would change the ways farms would work: The Seed Drill - Source Jethro Tull (1674 - 1741) Jethro Tull was a key player in introducing and popularizing root vegetables. His major contributions to the Agricultural Revolution, however, were his two inventions: the seed drill and horse hoe ( Gernhard ). The seed drill was an innovation that allowed seeds to be easily planted deep into the earth instead of on top where the majority were washed away or otherwise lost. The machine was pulled by horses and consisted of rotating drills or runners that would plant seeds at a set depth ( Seed Drill ). His other invention, the horse hoe, was another revolutionary device which allowed for much more efficient planting by allowing a horse to pull a plow quickly. Lord Townshend Townshend was another key player in popularizing root vegetables, even more so than Tull. Called "Turnip" Townshend by others, he was famous for his cultivation of turnips and clover on his estate in Norfolk. He introduced the four-course rotation of crops which helped keep the ground good for farming almost all year.

This cycle consisted of wheat, turnips, oats or barley, and clover ( The Agricultural Revolution ). Robert Bakewell (1725 - 1795) Bakewell was the first and most prominent stock breeder of farm animals. By breeding only animals with certain qualities, Bakewell was able to breed much more livestock. Bakewell kept elaborate genealogical records of his valuable animals and maintained his stock carefully; he was renowned for his success with sheep. By the end of the eighteenth century, his principles of stock breeding were practiced widely ( The Agricultural Revolution ). During the Agricultural Revolution, the agricultural output of England increased about three and a half times ( The Agricultural Revolution ). With more productive farms and a smaller work load, more people were able to leave the farms and go to the city. It is this large available workforce that allowed for the greater production needed to spark the Industrial Revolution. Key Innovations and Inventors of the Industrial Revolution Technology, arguably the greatest aspect of the Industrial Revolution, can be simplified into a few different innovations and inventors, most inspired by one product. The first product to undergo the "revolution" from the cottage industry to the mechanized age was cotton.

Britain, at the time, had a large wool trade. In 1760, the amount of wool exported was almost thirty times that of cotton. Demand for cotton grew with a change in the upper class fashion, and Britain started to allow more cotton production. Soon, not enough cotton could not be made to satisfy the demand ( Haberman 48). This demand was the inspiration for the following four inventions: John Kay's "flying shuttle" John Kay, a mechanic from Lancashire, patented the flying shuttle. Using cords attached to a picking peg, a single weaver, using one hand, could operate the shuttle on the loom ( Simkin ). With this invention it took four spinners to keep up with one cotton loom, and ten people to prepare yarn for one weaver. So while spinners were often busy, weavers often waited for yarn ( Gernhard ). As such, the flying shuttle effectively doubled a weaver's production of cloth ( Haberman 48).

Weaving machine before and after implementing Kay's "flying shuttle" - Source James Hargreaves' "spinning jenny" In 1764, James Hargreaves invented the "spinning jenny," a device which allowed one person to spin many threads at once, further increasing the amount of finished cotton that a worker could produce. By turning a single wheel, one could now spin eight threads at once, a number that was later increased to eighty. The thread, unfortunately, was usually coarse and lacked strength. Despite this shortcoming, over 20 000 of the machines were in use in Britain by 1778 ( Simkin ). Richard Arkwright's "water frame" Also in 1764, Richard Arkwright created the "water frame" to produce yarn faster ( Haberman 48). The "Spinning-Frame," its earlier name, was too large to be operated by hand. After experimenting with other sources of power, he decided to employ the power of a water wheel, and his machine became known as the water frame ( Industrial Revolution: The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain ). Rollers produced yarn of the correct thickness, while a set of spindles twisted fibers together.

The machine was able to produce a thread far stronger than any other available at the time ( Simkin ). Samuel Crompton's "Crompton's mule" In 1779, Samuel Crompton combined both the spinning jenny and the water frame to create a machine known as "Crompton's mule," which produced large amounts of fine, strong yarn ( Simkin ). With the arrival of these inventions, yarn had effectively become industrialized. By 1812, the cost of making cotton yarn had dropped by nine-tenths and the number of workers needed to turn wool into yarn had been reduced by four-fifths ( Gernhard ). The addition of these inventions to the work force moved the stress from the production to the supply of raw cotton. Within just a 35 year period, more than 100,000 power looms with 9,330,000 spindles were put into service in England and Scotland ( Technology Throughout History ). Britain took advantage of the Americas' available new cotton, using it to help absorb the demand.

By 1830, the importation of raw cotton had increased to eight times its past rate and half of Britain's exports were refined cotton. At this point, the demand was high enough to provide inspiration for what is probably the most well known invention of the Revolution: the steam engine. James Watt's "steam engine" In 1769, James Watt patented the steam engine and in effect created a new source of power. Early-model steam engines were introduced to drain water and raise coal from the mines, but the crucial development was the use of steam for power ( Industrial Revolution: The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain ). The first steam engine was actually produced by Thomas Newcomen, but Watt later improved and patented it. The original idea was to put a vertical piston and cylinder at the end of a pump handle and then to put steam in the cylinder and condense it with a spray of cold water. The vacuum created allowed atmospheric pressure to push the piston down, but Watt made it a reciprocating engine, creating the true steam engine ( Gernhard ).

Robert Fulton's "steamboat" In 1807, Robert Fulton used steam power to create the first steamboat, an invention that would change the way and the speed in which materials could be moved between the colonies of Britain ( Haberman 48). In the beginning, the ship was more expensive to build and operate than sailing vessels, but the steamship had some advantages. It could take off under its own power and it was more steadfast in storms ( Gernhard ). Stephenson's "steam powered train" Stephenson's Blucher - Source Finally, in 1814, Stephenson used the steam engine to create a steam powered train, which would eventually allow increased communication and trade between places before deemed too far. Soon, the steam-powered train had become an icon of success throughout the world ( Haberman 48). Britain encouraged the building of railroads in other European countries, often with British capital, equipment, and technicians. Railroads became a standard item of British export ( Gernhard ). From a suitable product comes a mass of inventions that will lead other areas of trade and production towards industrialization. These first innovations have greatly effected the basic elements of the era: agriculture, power, transportation, textiles, and communication.

The Textile Industry The advancement of the textile industry was a key development in Britain's industrialization. It was consequently this industry that first employed the factory system. The raw materials used were essentially the same ones used under the domestic system, mainly featuring wool and cotton, but machines were now used to take the raw product and create fabric. With the use of machines and an "assembly-line" approach, it was possible to make enormous amounts of fabric in less time and for less money ( Porter ). Yet while advancements in this industry brought huge profits, and were therefore very good for the economy, there were many problems with how factories were run. Young children were employed, and were given very small salaries. They were also forced to work extremely long hours in dangerous conditions, and were beaten in order to keep them working ( Kaufman ). It was not until the late 1820s that critics began to attack the way in which factories were run. Finally, in 1832, Michael Thomas Sadler headed a parliamentary committee on child labour known as the "Sadler Commission" ( Modern Europe ). But even when legislation designed to protect the worker was put in place, it was rarely implemented.

Powerless workers eventually formed unions as a way of fighting the profit-hungry factory owners. Inventions in the Textile Industry 1733 - Flying shuttle invented by John Kay - an improvement to looms that enabled weavers to weave faster. 1742 - Cotton mills were first opened in England. 1764 - Spinning jenny invented by James Hargreaves - the first machine to improve upon the spinning wheel. 1764 - Water frame invented by Richard Arkwright - the first powered textile machine. 1769 - Arkwright patented the water frame. 1770 - Hargreaves patented the Spinning Jenny. 1773 - The first all-cotton textiles were produced in factories. 1779 - Crompton invented the spinning mule that allowed for greater control over the weaving process. 1785 - Cartwright patented the power loom. It was improved upon by William Horrocks, known for his invention of the variable speed batton in 1813. 1787 - Cotton goods production had increased 10 fold since 1770. 1789 - Samuel Slater brought textile machinery design to the US.

1790 - Arkwright built the first steam powered textile factory in Nottingham, England. 1792 - Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin - a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fibre. 1804 - Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the Jacquard Loom that weaved complex designs. Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards. 1813 - William Horrocks invented the variable speed batton (for an improved power loom). 1856 - William Perkin invented the first synthetic dye ( Bellis ). The Factory System Untitled Document Check for Understanding Why did the Industrial Revolution Start in England? By the end of the 19th century, the island of Great Britain, which is about the size of the state of Louisiana, controlled the largest empire in the history of the world—an empire that covered one quarter of the world’s land mass. You will learn more about this empire in the next chapter. But how did this little island come to rule an empire? How did Great Britain acquire so much military and economic power in the world?

The answer, of course, is that it had an enormous commercial and technological head start over the rest of the world because the Industrial Revolution started in England. But why did the Industrial Revolution occur first in England and not somewhere else in the world? Historians describe a confluence—a coming together—of many factors and they do not agree on which are most important. Some of these factors we discussed earlier because they had their seeds in pre-industrial society. All of these factors came together in the late 18th century to create the unique conditions in England that culminated in the first-ever Industrial Revolution: The Agricultural Revolution discussed earlier resulted in increased food production and increased population in England first. Population Growth, also discussed earlier, resulted in more people from the countryside being freed up to work for wages in the new cities,— and eventually increased demand for products such as clothing. Financial Innovations—such as central banks, stock markets, and joint stock companies—encouraged people, especially in Northern Europe, to take risks with investments, trade, and new technologies. The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution encouraged scholars and craftspeople to apply new scientific thinking to mechanical and technological challenges. In the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, Europeans gradually incorporated science and reason into their worldview.

Some historians argue that these intellectual shifts made English culture, in particular, highly receptive to new mechanical and financial ideas. Navigable Rivers and Canals in Great Britain quickened the pace and cheapened the cost of transportation of raw materials and finished products. Adam Smith, the first modern economist, believed this was a key reason for England’s early success. In 1776, in his famous book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he wrote that “Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements” (Weightman 43). Coal and Iron deposits were plentiful in Great Britain and proved essential to the development of all new machines made of iron or steel and powered by coal—such as the steam-powered machinery in textile factories, and the locomotive. Government Policies in England toward property and commerce encouraged innovation and the spread of global trade. The government created patent laws that allowed inventors to benefit financially from the “intellectual property” of their inventions.

The British government also encouraged global trade by expanding the Navy to protect trade and granting monopolies or other financial incentives to companies so they would explore the world to find resources. World Trade gradually increased in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution and provided European countries access to raw materials and a market for goods. It also increased wealth that could then be loaned by banks to finance more industrial expansion in an upward spiral of economic growth. By 1500, Europe had a technological supremacy over the rest of the world in shipbuilding, navigation, and metallurgy (metal working). In successive years, European countries would use these advantages to dominate world trade with Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Cottage Industry, discussed earlier, served as a transition from a rural to an industrial economy. Like the later industrial factories, the cottage industry relied on wage labor, cloth production, tools and rudimentary machines, and a market to buy and sell raw materials (cotton) and finished products (clothes). The Large and Lucky Continent of Eurasia. Evolutionary Biologist Jared Diamond takes the long view to explain why the entire continent of Eurasia evolved to be so technologically advanced.

In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, Diamond argues that the good fortune of the entire continent of Eurasia was evident for thousands of years. Eurasia invented agriculture 12,000 years ago because large grains of rice and wheat just happened to originate and grow there. The efficiency of agriculture allowed various civilizations to grow population, free up labor for tasks besides food production, urbanize, invent writing, and create advanced technology. Diamond argues that the largest of continents was also blessed with the largest domesticated animals in the world—such as horses, donkeys, pigs, and cows. These animals served as beasts of burden in agriculture and also as a much-needed food source. And so the health of Eurasian populations improved. These animals also brought epidemic diseases that killed millions of Eurasians over thousands of years. But, after the plague ran its course through the population, surviving Eurasians then had antibodies to these illnesses, which made them and their ancestors resistant to them. So these plagues became a horrifying stroke of good luck for invading Eurasians later on. People from the Americas had no medium to large domesticated animals (with the exception of the Alpaca which didn’t leave the Andes mountain area).

As a result, they did not experience devastating animal-based plagues and diseases. That’s a good thing, right? Except that, unlike Europeans, the Americans did not then have the anti-bodies to resist the European illnesses. So, when Europeans invaded the Americas after 1492, people from the Americas were highly susceptible to Eurasian deadly viruses and diseases. But no plagues went the other direction from the Americas to Europe. The depopulation of the Americas made it easy for Europeans to conquer. In short, Diamond, contrary to many historians, sees the Industrial Revolution as an inevitable result of geography and evolutionary biology that played out not only in a burst of activity, but over many thousands of years. The Big Industrial Innovations: How the Industrial Revolution Began in Great Britain We have learned many reasons why industrialization started in Europe and England. But which industry triggered the Industrial Revolution in England? Well, it all started with the textile (cloth) industry. Making cloth, by hand, for pants, shirts, socks, bedspreads and other domestic items had always required lots of skill and time. As population grew in England, more people needed and were willing to buy textile goods.

The cottage industry showed how much people could produce in their homes through spinning and weaving cloth by hand. But this domestic production system could not keep up with the growing demands of England’s growing population. Instead, starting in the late 18th century, a series of innovations shifted textile production to a new factory system. And cotton led the way. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, cotton became the world’s most important non-food agricultural product-- and it remains so to this day. In the 1700s, cotton textiles had many production advantages over other types of cloth. The first textile factory in Great Britain was actually for making silk. But, since only wealthy people could afford the product, production remained very low. Cotton, on the other hand, was far less expensive. It was also stronger and more easily colored and washed than wool or linen. One challenge of using cotton, however, was that the British did not grow any cotton plants because of their cold climate. So, they revved up trade with cotton producers far across the world, such as India and the Southern United States. Look at the table below of American cotton production during the first stage of the Industrial Revolution.

Almost all of this raw cotton, processed by slave labor, was sold to England. This cotton production soared as new inventions made textile production increasingly inexpensive and efficient. American Production of Raw Cotton, 1790-1860 (in bales) Year Textile Inventions In 1733, James Kay, a clockmaker, invented a simple weaving machine called the flying shuttle. He built it, supposedly, with nothing more than a pocketknife as his tool. The flying shuttle improved on the old hand loom. A worker pulled a cord of rope back and forth to send a small piece of canoe-shaped wood, or shuttle, “flying” across a wood frame through threads to weave cloth. The machine only came into general use in the 1760s—after decades of trial-and-error improvements—but once adopted, this first big invention in the textile industry doubled worker productivity: one adult weaver could accomplish the work of two. The invention was a small improvement and was still powered by people rather than coal, wind, or water. Nonetheless it began the crucial process by which unskilled workers could produce more cloth with machines than skilled workers could produce by hand (Weightman 55).

Watch a few moments of this video to see a hand shuttle moving slowing across the frame of a loom. This gives you a sense of how a shuttle works on a weaving loom. Now watch a few moments of this video to see somebody working a flying shuttle. With a flick of the wrist, they can make the shuttle "fly" back and forth through the weaving frames. Much quicker than hand weaving, eh? In the 1760s, spinning innovations finally caught up with the weaving capacity of the flying shuttle. The hardest part was to create a subtle mechanized device for pulling and twisting the cotton fiber just the right amount to create strong thread. In 1764, James Hargreaves invented such a device, called a spinning jenny— “jenny” or “jen” was short for “engine.” So, think of it as a “spinning engine.” With eight spindles, the spinning machine immediately increased by eightfold the amount a worker could produce. The spinning jenny could fit into a small cottage and be operated by unskilled workers, including children. But some were not pleased with the innovation.

Workers skilled at the old spinning wheel, and fearful that the new machine would take their jobs, marched over to Hargreaves’ house and destroyed twenty of the first new machines before they could be used. Worse still for Hargreaves, his patent claim on one of the most famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution was invalidated because he applied for it after he had already sold several machines (Rosen 222-224). The next big challenge for the industrial tinkerers was to engineer a way that these new machines could be powered by an energy source that was more efficient and powerful than human muscle. In 1769, Richard Arkwright, a barber and wigmaker, figured out how to hook up a new spinning machine to a water wheel. It is possible that John Kay, a clockmaker that Arkwright met in a pub, might have had the original idea, but Arkwright made use of it and called it the water frame. Arkwright’s spinning factory opened in 1771 along the River Derwent. It was an immediate success, spinning strong, high-quality threads cheaply and better than those spun by hand or a spinning jenny.

Arkwright’s cotton factory spun 24 hours a day, employing mostly women and children on 12-hour shifts. Each water frame spun 91 spools at a time, more than almost 100 people could spin on an old spinning wheel. Arkwright’s business took off in large part due to the assistance of the British Parliament, which, to protect the new English textile industry, outlawed the importation of superior cotton cloth from India (Ashton, 57-58). Another inventor, Samuel Crompton, combined the spinning and weaving process into one machine in 1774. Raw cotton could be introduced in one end and produce cloth on the other. Crompton failed to patent his invention, but the enterprising Arkwright immediately incorporated it into his new factories. The invention was called a spinning “mule” because, like a mule, it was the offspring of two different types of parents. With Crompton’s mule, Arkwright now had the most productive textile mills in the world. Arkwright guarded his patents and charged extremely high royalties to use them. As a result, he dominated the early spinning industry and became fabulously wealthy.

Ten years after giving up wigmaking and taking a risk to start his own factory, he employed 5,000 workers, including children as young as six (Rosen 228-233). Arkwright was not a great inventor. He borrowed most of his ideas from others. But he was one of the first and most successful entrepreneurs of the early Industrial Revolution; he understood the potential of these new textile inventions to produce inexpensive and high quality cloth. When others complained in court that he had stolen their ideas, Arkwright responded that “if any man has found a thing, and begun a thing, and does not go forwards. . . another man has a right to take it up and get a patent for it” (233). He, perhaps more than any other single person, created the cotton industry that spurred the Industrial Revolution and created great wealth for himself and for England. From 1800 to 1850, cotton products accounted for the majority of monetary value for British exports (Stearns 29). In 1785, Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, another game changer.

Although it did not become widely used until after 1800, it was powered by steam and thus replaced the flying shuttle, which could not compete with the new loom’s weaving speed and efficiency. Cartwright explained his inspiration: As soon as Arkwright’s patent [for spinning] expired, so many mills would be erected and so much cotton spun that hands would never be found to weave it. . . . It struck me that as plain weaving can only be three movements which were to follow each other in succession, there would be little difficulty in producing them and repeating them. Full of these ideas I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished, I got a weaver to put in a warp, which was of such materials as sailcloths are usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the product. (Rosen 239) Watch this video to see a powerloom in action. Cartwright’s invention took many years to refine because it was difficult for the loom to weave quickly and mechanically without the thread slackening or the shuttle moving too slowly or too rapidly.

The first power looms were installed in a factory in Manchester, where they suffered a similar fate to the first spinning jennies. Some Manchester craft weavers, worried that they would lose their skilled jobs, threatened the first power loom factory and soon afterwards a fire mysteriously destroyed it (239). But the genie was out of the bottle—no other loom could compete. Like the spinning mule, the power loom and the steam engine that powered it could not fit into a cottage. All these big, heavy machines would need to be brought under one large roof. The cottage industry had died, but factories were just beginning to house industry. And these larger machines and factories led to enormous growth in other industries, especially those of coal and iron. The Iron Industry In the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, the quality of iron and the process of refining it had changed little in Great Britain. Iron had been used for agricultural tools, chains, locks, bolts, nails, horse stirrups, scythes, sickles, and anchors.

Through a laborious and very time-consuming process, master ironcrafters could even make steel, a form of processed iron, with fewer impurities, reserved for making knives, razors, swords, guns and small working parts for clocks and watches. In the 18th century, ironmongers began to experiment with ways to tease out more impurities from iron. They wanted to make their iron stronger and less expensive, and they also wanted to make the tedious process of iron-making more efficient (Weightman 28-33). Henry Cort, an ironmaster pursuing a way to refine iron,discovered two methods that changed the industry. He reheated bars of iron, melting them down to apaste, mixed the paste and heated it with coke (a substance burned off from coal), then stirred it so that carbon and many impurities burned off. The purified iron was rolled up into a puddled ball and finally rolled out to squeeze out any dross that remained. Cort called the process “puddling and rolling” and patented it in 1785. This iron-refining process allowed England to stop importing iron from northern Europe and instead to grow the largest iron industry in the world.

This cheaper and stronger iron galvanized every major industry—construction, tools, shipbuilding, textile inventions, steam engines and railroads (54-55). Unfortunately, Cort later lost all the wealth he created for himself, including his patents, when it was discovered that he had embezzled money from the British Navy to buy his first iron forgery. (Rosen 56) Nevertheless, iron production in Great Britain skyrocketed. Amount of Iron Produced in Great Britain Periods (Cipollal Fontana Economic History of Europe) The Steam Engine The defining invention of the Industrial Revolution was most definitely the steam engine. The steam engine was the energy behind the most advanced textile inventions, such as the spinning mule and the power loom. It symbolized the transition from human power in homes to machine power in factories. Moreover, the steam engine revolutionized transportation when it was applied to locomotives and ships. So how did this amazing invention come about? And how did it work? The steam engine was originally invented in England to pull water out of coal mines. For thousands of years, wood from local forests had been the main fuel in England, as well as the main material for shipbuilding and housing construction.

By the end of the 17th century, however, few forests remained (Weightman 28-33). So the English sought to find an alternative energy source for heating. They turned to coal, which was in great supply. By the early 1700s, the easy-to-reach open coal pits were gone, and mine shafts as deep as 200 feet were dug to find it (27). In these deep shafts, groundwater would eventually seep in and flood the tunnels. This seepage was dangerous for miners and expensive for mine owners. Miners used pots, hand pumps and, occasionally, windmills to drain the water. Finally, in 1708, Thomas Newcomen invented a simple engine that used steam to pump water out of coalmines. Here’s how his engine worked. Boiled water created steam, which entered a chamber or cylinder, which pushed a piston up. The piston lifted a pump. Watch this animation to see it in action. Newcomen’s steam engine worked—slowly. But it could only create a pumping motion and not a rotating motion that might be used to grind wheat or move machinery.

In fact, it was so inefficient in its use of energy that nobody used it for any other purpose for over sixty years (30). In the 1760s, James Watt (1736-1819), a Scottish instrument maker, teamed up with professors from the University of Glasgow to improve Newcomen’s engine. In the old engine, as you can see from the animation, a piston moved up and down as steam was injected: this steam pushed the piston up the cylinder, then condensed on the down stroke (see animation here). The piston cylinder in Newcomen’s engine had to alternate between hot and cold temperatures, to expand or condense the steam—warm on the upstroke and cold on the downstroke. But this resulted in a waste of energy and a waste of time, as the piston cylinder changed temperature and had to be constantly reheated. The burning question: how could the piston cylinder remain hot and cool at the same time? (35-36) In 1765, the twenty-nine-year-old Watt, strolling across the town square in Glasgow and reflecting on the inefficiency of Newcomen’s engine, had a flash of insight, an epiphany.

“The whole thing was arranged in my mind,” he said. He suddenly understood that a separate cylinder—called a condenser—could be kept permanently cool while being connected to the piston cylinder, which would remain hot (35-36). Watt recalled, “The idea came into my mind, that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder” (Rosen 115). Putting the insight into practice, Watt added a second cylinder or chamber. The steam would be sucked out of the piston chamber and into the new cylinder, cool off, condense, and thus form a vacuum that used atmospheric pressure to move the piston. Meanwhile, the cylinder with the moving piston remained hot as another injection of steam entered. (104 see photo on page 105) Watt patented the idea of this separate condenser in 1769. Known for this famous flash of insight, Watt was actually a relentless and careful experimenter, a student of the Scientific Revolution. In all his work, he used rigorous and precise scientific methods to test his ideas.

Three minutes into this video below , there is a very clear animation and explanation of Newcomen's steam engine and what Watt did to make it so much more productive. After years of struggling on his own to make the new steam engine work correctly, Watt successfully teamed up with the largest and most famous factory in the world, Soho Manufactory, which made jewelry, silverware, and tools in Birmingham, England. The owner was looking for an energy source that was more powerful than water wheels. At Soho, Watt met and collaborated with the most skilled ironworkers and engineers in the country. With their help, the new engine became four times as productive as Newcomen’s. Watt continued to tinker and improve it so that steam could be injected into both sides of the piston cylinder, creating a double-acting piston. In 1781, Watt pressed on further to adapt the engine from a reciprocal up-and-down motion to a turning or rotary motion. Now, the steam engine could supply consistent and cheap energy for all the latest textile inventions. At the insistence of one of his engineers, Watt patented a steam-powered carriage but didn’t think much would come of it.

(Weightman 58-9) Watt’s rotary steam engine was being perfected just at the same moment that iron-working improved and textile inventions were becoming more powerful, greater in size, sizeable and in need of better, cheaper, and more reliable power sources. The new steam engine could be harnessed to all these new inventions. In 1782, the year after Watt perfected the rotary steam engine, there were only two cotton mill factories in Manchester. Twenty years later there were more than 50. (Ashton 60) The Factory The idea for the first textile factory—a word derived from “manufactory,” the place where goods were manufactured—came from a British silk mill worker, John Lombe. He travelled to Northern Italy to steal designs for secret Italian machines that spun and wove the silk (it is worth noting here that the Chinese had been spinning and weaving silk with simple looms for thousands of years before the Italians.) In 1719, Lombe patented the ideas as his own in Great Britain and built a large building next to a river to use a water wheel to power the machines. The mill was five stories high and employed 200 men.

Silk was a luxury item that most could not afford, and so few enterpeneurs followed in Lombe’s footsteps. But this silk factory came into mind years later when industrialists were looking for ways to power new textile inventions at one location. As textile inventions grew in size , they could no longer fit in cottages (Rosen 212-217; wikipedia article on factories). Like Lombe’s old silk factory, the first textile factories were located on rivers so that a water wheel could provide a reliable and consistent rotating power for the new inventions. Arkwright built his first cotton mill just away from a river and dug out a channel or millrace, so that the water wheel benefitted from the current, as well as the gravity of water coming down hill and into a narrow chute (Rosen 230). But, the invention of Watt’s rotary steam engine changed everything. Textile factories no longer had to be built right next to a river. However large buildings were required for the new large steam engines, spinning mules, and power looms. In 1790, Arkwright used steam power to run his spinning mule factory.

Workers, along with their families, congregated at these new factories. Their need for stores, churches and the like resulted in the formation of small communities, which became towns and cities. Another important result of the factory was specialization of labor. In 1776, Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, wrote the all-time most influential and famous economics book: Wealth of Nations. For Smith, the key to the efficiency, productivity, and quality control of a factory was the division of labor. This was a process by which the key tasks in manufacturing were identified and assigned to individual workers to specialize, perfect and repeat with dispatch. *********Add sentence about effects/relevance of this approach or at least how “revolutionary”/different it was from before or how it fueled growth. Railroads The steam engine, it turns out, also sparked innovative methods of transportation. Railways were not new in pre-industrial Britain. There were over 1,000 railways by 1800, most of them connected to an iron pit or a coal mine with a canal or river. But all of these railways were drawn by horses (Weightman 118).

In fact, horses were the best form of land transportation in Eurasia since the beginning of time; the only other option was to walk. Steam would change all that. The first full-scale steam-powered locomotive took its maiden voyage down the main street of Camborne, England on Christmas Eve in 1801. The Cornish “puffer” drove like a car without rails and was the brainchild of Richard Trevithick. After the first run, the inventor parked it in a shed and went to celebrate his success. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn the boiler off and the entire shed and locomotive were destroyed in a fire. But Trevithick got another chance. An ironworks owner built a nine-mile railway to compete with a canal. Horses pulled cars full of iron and coal along the rails. In a competition, Trevithick’s Cornish “puffer” succeeded in hauling ten tons of bar iron and seventy passengers along rails at a speed of five miles per hour. Sadly, Trevithick could never turn the invention into financial success: he died in Peru failing in his attempt to seek his fortune in silver mines (Weightman 48-49, 58-9).

A young self-taught engineer, George Stephenson, picked up where Trevithick left off. Stephenson was raised in coalfields, where his family worked. He took jobs there, first working in the mines with a pick and then working on an old Newcomen steam engine that pumped water out of mine shafts. Stephenson grew up illiterate, like the rest of his family, but, as a teenager, taught himself to read and hired a tutor to teach him basic math. To make extra money, he learned to repair watches. At 22 years old, Stephenson was put in charge of running a Watt steam engine at a spinning factory. Over the following years, he taught himself mechanical engineering by taking apart steam engines and other machines,putting them back together. He took out patents on a steam engine locomotive and iron rails in 1816. He succeeded in improving upon Trevithick’s puffer, but his big break came as the result of the fast-growing cotton industry in Manchester (Rosen 298- 305). In 1825, Stephenson was commissioned to construct a 30-mile railway line from Liverpool to Manchester.

Manchester was the largest industrial town in the world, and merchants needed to transport lots of cotton and finished cloth. Despite its young age, Liverpool, as the port for the Manchester cotton industry, handled one third of the world’s trade (Rosen 298- 305). Stephenson surveyed the route and built the railway. He set the distance between the two tracks at four feet, eight and a half inches, because it happened to be the width of some coal-mining cars—and this would become the worldwide standard railroad gauge. In 1829, the railway owners sponsored a contest to find out who could make the fastest and most reliable locomotive to run on the newly built Manchester-to-Liverpool railway. Most contestants entered steam-powered vehicles, but one underdog participant actually used a horse trotting on a treadmill attached to a car. A man named George and his son, Robert, called their locomotive the Rocket. They defeated five competitors and reached average speeds of at least 29 miles per hour. On the day the Manchester-to-Liverpool railroad was opened to the public, a member of Parliament and a supporter of the railway was accidently killed by the Rocket.

In a failed attempt to save the gentleman’s life, Stephenson opened up the throttle to top speed and made a heroic dash to a hospital in the next town—and he averaged 35 mph for 15 miles. The competition garnered much attention in England and Europe; Stephenson and other top competitors took offers for their new locomotives from as far away as Russia. In 1831, just two years after the race, the Liverpool-to-Manchester railway carried 450,000 passengers, 43,000 tons of cotton, and 11,000 tons of coal. By 1835, the railway carried 120,000 tons of coal (Weightman 132-134; Rosen 301 to 310) This silent movie used a replica of Stephenson's Rocket. It gives you a sense of the size and speed of the famous train. Stephenson’s success was a culmination of over a century of industrial innovation. The Rocket had incorporated the steam engines of Newcomen and Watt, Cort’s iron-refining innovations, and Trevithick’s original locomotive.

But, it also would not have occurred were it not for the rising cotton industry that created the need for the railroad in the industrial town of Manchester. And, of course, the new railroads used coal as the main fuel source. The ultimate triumph of the Industrial Revolution, railroads moved people, raw materials, and finished goods rapidly around England. This interaction brought people to the new industrial cities; gradually increased trade within England, Europe, and the world; and helped turn England into the wealthiest nation on earth. Growth of British Railroads in Miles of Track Year (history home web site) Capitalism: The Free Market In the previous economic system during the Middle Ages, peasants typically worked the land and in exchange they would perform services or labor for a noble lord. In many parts of Europe, peasants were tied to the land as serfs. As we saw in our earlier discussion of pre-industrial society, the introduction of financial innovations such as stock markets, joint stock companies, and national banks were all instruments for a new free-market economic system that had been evolving over centuries. The feudal system gradually eroded , and during the Industrial Revolution, the free market took its place.

The innovations during the Industrial Revolution accelerated the rise of an economic system called the free market, also known as capitalism (some people use the French phrase “laissez faire,” meaning “let them act”) All these terms imply pretty much the same thing: in a pure free market, buyers and sellers (private business owners) satisfy their own interests by voluntarily agreeing to exchange money for a product, without the interference of the government. So, for example, when Apple Computer, a private company, sells an iPad to a customer, that’s the free market at work. Apple makes a product it thinks consumers want, and the buyer chooses to use his or her money to buy the iPad. Business owners compete in a free market to make the best product or service at a price that will attract the most buyers. The successful businesses grow larger and employ more workers, thereby growing the economy. Unsuccessful businesses go out of business. The government does not intervene. Proponents of the free market believe that this system encourages innovation, high quality goods, and increases the wealth of countries. The government does as little as possible in a free market economic system.

In its purest form, governments should protect private property, improve infrastructure such as roads, and maintain a stable rule of law for trade. That’s about it. According to pure capitalism, healthcare, education, retirement benefits and other social services should be provided by private businesses rather than the government. You should recognize this system because it is mostly the type of economy we have today in the United States, though the role of the government in the free market remains a consistent subject of national political debate. It’s also important to keep in mind that capitalism is an economic system, but it’s also supported by a cultural belief system. The United States, like England, generally believes in hard work, individual rights, respect for time, self-discipline, and an entrepreneurial spirit of innovation and risk-taking (Grasby 68). This now widely embraced idea of a free market system came to fruition during the Industrial Revolution. We have read about how private individuals took risks to create technologically innovative products—such as the flying shuttle or the power loom—and then tried to sell them or use them to make a profit. This spirit of invention was not new, but during the Industrial Revolution it was relentless and occurred on a scale that was unprecedented.

When the Industrial Revolution was in its infancy, in 1776, Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, wrote the most influential and famous economics book ever, entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He argued that when individuals pursue their self-interest in a free market, they benefit society as a whole because the competition keeps prices low while encouraging quality and innovation. Free market capitalism also has it critics. Later in this chapter, we will learn about the most famous critic, Karl Marx, and his idea of Socialism, an economic system that prizes the public good and equality over individualism and competition.

Question: What is the nameof the invention of John Kay which aided the early textile revolution during the 18th century?
Answer: THE FLYING SHUTTLE