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Technological forecasting in textile industry: From first to fourth industrial revolution
Published in Fernando Moreira da Silva, Helena Bártolo, Paulo Bártolo, Rita Almendra, Filipa Roseta, Henrique Amorim Almeida, Ana Cristina Lemos, Challenges for Technology Innovation: An Agenda for the Future, 2017
A.Y.S. Duarte, F.G. Dedini, R.A. Sanches, R. Anderl
One of the most important inventions in the spinning process was the introduction of the “spinning mule” in 1779 that allowed the production of a high quality yarn. At this point, the manual spinning was completely replaced by the industrial method (Ribeiro, 1984; McNeil, 1990).
Ring and Mule Spinning in the Nineteenth Century
Published in John F. Wilson, Steven Toms, Nicholas D. Wong, The Cotton and Textile Industry: Innovation and Maturity, 2021
The supremacy of the Lancashire cotton spinning industry in the nineteenth century and up to 1914 was built on the spinning mule and it was this machine that enabled the industry to process a wide range of cottons sourced from different parts of the world into a wide range of yars from the very coarsest to those finer than anything spun in the world today and for varied purposes such as weaving, knitting and thread making. But in the twentieth century the industry went into decline and today no cotton is spun in Lancashire. Moreover, where cotton is spun, mainly in Asia, it is not spun on mules but on ring frames, and to a lesser extent on open-end rotors. The current study arose out of a desire to understand the technology of the Lancashire cotton spinning industry which led to the investigation of the technological issues behind the seemingly slow development of ring spinning. But one cannot do this without encountering the classic 'rings versus mules' debate which has been pursued by economic historians since the 1960s. The fundamental argument was that a major factor in Lancashire's decline in comparison with other countries, particularly the United States of America, was that the industry had not adopted the ring frame to the extent that it should have done. The debate was revitalised in the 1980s with the publication of papers by William Lazonick and others who argued that the structure of the industry prevented the wider adoption of ring spinning and that the industry had failed because it had not restructured itself for the use of ring spinning in integrated mills.1 This debate is not dead, since more recently other scholars have dealt with the question, while providing differing view points on the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry. For example. Steven Toms has brought evidence from financial and accounting records to bear on the problem, while Stephen Broadberrv and Andrew Marrison have argued in favour of the traditional view that Lancashire's decline was primarily the result of foreign competition based on cheap labour.2 They, and other writers, also point out that the New England cotton industry, which made extensive use of ring spinning in integrated mills, failed even more catastrophically than Lancashire during the inter-war years.3
Power and innovation: Excavating pre-1806 steam engines in the Manchester area
Published in The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, 2018
Whilst the spinning blocks from Phases 1 to 3 survive, the 1798 12 hp steam engine located on the eastern gable of the Old Mill was removed when Decker Mill was built. The floor of the new 1801 engine house on the northern side of the enlarged mill was largely destroyed by the building of an economiser on the site in the late nineteenth century. However, the northern elevation of the 1801 engine house has survived. This contains fragments of the original structure associated with the 40 hp steam engine including sandstone blocks to support the frame, or entablature, around the top of the beam engine; a sandstone axle mounting; and two blocked arched windows (Figure 13). The northern wall of the external stair tower contains a timber lintel or sole plate that supports a cast-iron bearing box that housed the 1801 drive shaft running into the mill via this stair tower (Miller & Wild 2007, 104–107). In both Old Mill and Decker Mill cast-iron fittings and empty sockets mark the original position of the two vertical drive shafts that ran Old Mill and Decker Mill, and the branching horizontal line shafting arrangement, from which the belts drove the cotton spinning mule machinery on the upper floors. These can be seen in bay three of Old Mill and bay 18 of Decker.58
Cotton mule spinning after Richard Roberts
Published in The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, 2022
The spinning mule was the machine on which the Lancashire cotton industry built its prosperity during its heyday up until the First World War (Figure 1). This article is concerned with the development of mule spinning in the cotton industry after the invention of a successful self-acting mule by Richard Roberts in 1830. An earlier paper concerning the origins of the power loom demonstrated that this was not so well understood as may have been previously thought and there were aspects that had been overlooked.1 The same may be true of the early inventions in spinning but developments after 1830 surprisingly have been little studied, accounts often stopping at the self-acting mule of Richard Roberts in 1830.