James Hargreaves

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Spinning Jenny.

James Hargreaves (also: Hargraves) (baptized January 8, 1721 , in Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire , † April 22, 1778 in Nottingham Nottinghamshire ) was a British cotton weaver and inventor of the spinning machine.

On September 10, 1740, he married Elizabeth Grimshaw in Kirk Church. They had 13 children, none of whom was known to be named Jenny. The name Jenny in Spinning Jenny is probably derived from the English engine for "motor".

In 1733 John Kay invented the "flying shuttle" ("flying weaver " or Schnellschützen ). This doubled the speed of weaving. As before, however, manually spun yarn was required for the weft thread (each weaver had to deliver 4–10 spinners). Back then, a weaver had to walk for miles to collect the spun yarn he needed to keep his loom going. This difficulty in supplying wool and cotton weavers with sufficient yarn was brought before the Society of Arts in 1763 and prompted the Society of Arts to offer £ 50 prize money “for the best invention of a machine to make six threads of wool and flax , Can spin hemp or cotton at the same time and only need one person to operate it. ”Many spinning machines were demonstrated, but none met the specifications.

Spinning Jenny with a hand crank and lots of spools of thread

For a number of years Hargreaves had been working on improvements to the carding machine to replace the hand-held cards that were then in use to smooth the cotton fibers and prepare them for spinning.

In 1765, however, he turned his attention to a machine for the mechanical spinning of yarn. He secretly built this in his house. Hargreave's solution was likely based on the traditional “Jersey” wheel.

In 1764 he allegedly invented the fine spinning machine with which it was possible to spin six threads of wool, cotton, hemp or flax at the same time; the spinning jenny . It was small and handy and easy to use. His invention enabled a further increase in productivity in the spinning process.

In the Deutsches Museum, the Spinning Jenny works as follows:

“The principle of the Spinning Jenny is based on the fact that a thread is pulled from a roving bobbin (with coarsely spun material) over a spindle, which then runs over a press beam on a moving carriage. First, with the press open, the carriage moves away from the spindle, thereby winding the roving from the roving bobbin and pulling it through the press. The roving is stretched when the press closes shortly before the end of the exit and the carriage continues until it stops. At the same time, the roving is tightened slightly by turning the spindle. With the press closed, the spindle is now rotated until the thread is twisted to achieve the desired strength. By turning it briefly in the opposite direction, the thread loosens slightly and slides from the spindle tip onto the bobbin. The carriage moves back slowly while the spindle turns, and the thread is wound up layer by layer while simultaneously raising and lowering a winder. The winder also ensures that the angle between the spinning phase and the winding phase is changed (when spinning, the angle between the spindle tip and the thread must be> 90 °). When the carriage has reached the spindle, the press opens and the spinning process begins again. The car is moved back and forth with the left hand, the drive wheel with the right. "

He sold some of these machines privately in his neighborhood, which soon saw the huge advantage. The machine was called the "Spinning Jenny" and achieved even more for the spinners than the fly-shuttle had done for the weavers. Of course, an invention like this couldn't be kept secret for long. Word got around that there was a machine that could be operated by a spinner that could easily work with 8, 16 or even 20 threads instead of one thread. This would mean that women would no longer need to work at the spinning wheel, and the ignorant population began to rebel against the machine and its inventor.

On an appointed day, weavers from Darwen, Mellor, Tockholes, and Oswaldtwistle gathered in Blackburn and made their way to Hargreave's house. When they didn't find him there, they broke the spinning jenny into pieces and destroyed furniture and the household. Then they moved on to the factory of Robert Peele senior (1750-1830), who used the Jenny, and left only a ruin. Thereupon James Hargreaves fled to Nottingham in 1768 .

Nottingham was the center of hosiery, knitted from silk, cotton and wool. Here was a workshop in which he secretly made Jennies with the help of the carpenter Thomas James. Over time, Hargreaves and James opened a small factory on Nottingham's Mill Street, in close proximity to the factory of Richard Arkwright , his more successful rival and inventor of the Waterframe .

On July 12, 1770 he received his patent (no. 962) for his invention.

Over time, a number of Lancashire cranks had made copies of his Jenny, so Hargreaves informed them that he would take legal action against her. The owners met and sent a delegate to Nottinham who offered Hargreaves £ 3,000 who had initially asked for £ 7,000. They agreed on £ 4,000. Negotiations dragged on, but before a trial could ensue, Hargreave's attorney was informed that his client had already sold some Jennies to buy clothes for his children. The lawyer then withdrew from the negotiations.

Business with his partner continued "with moderate success" until Hargreave's death on April 22, 1778. His widow received £ 400 from his partner, Mr. James, for her husband's share of the business. She owned enough other possessions her husband had bought that she could not touch the amount and leave it to her children.

literature

Web links

Commons : Spinning jennies  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Hargreaves. In: Encyclopædia Britannica.
  2. ↑ Weaving with different looms in Meyer's Large Conversation Lexicon
  3. ^ Henry Fishwick: A history of Lancashire. Elliot Stock, London 1894, p. 264 ( archive.org ).
  4. ↑ Jersey Wheel
  5. ↑ In various sources, Thomas Highs is stated as the actual inventor , cf. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: cottontimes.co.uk )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.cottontimes.co.uk
  6. ^ How the Spinning Jenny works described in the Deutsches Museum, Munich
  7. ^ " Sir Robert Peel, 1st Baronet one of the richest textile manufacturers of the early Industrial Revolution. ”
  8. ↑ Francis Espinasse: worthies Lancashire. Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. London 1874, p. 326 ( archive.org ).
personal data
SURNAME Hargreaves, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hargraves, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English cotton weaver, inventor of the first industrial spinning machine
DATE OF BIRTH 1720 or 1721
PLACE OF BIRTH Blackburn
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1778
Place of death Nottingham