Spinner (profession)
Spinners practiced the craft of spinning as a profession. By arranging, joining and twisting thin, short animal and vegetable (individual) fibers, they made a long thread.
history
For thousands of years people have spun threads out of flax , wool or cotton and made clothes, carpets and blankets from them. To do this, they initially used the rotating hand spindle and for around six hundred years the spinning wheel as a tool.
After the demand for textiles had risen sharply in the 18th century, the mechanization of handcraft began. Richard Arkwright from England invented the wing spinning machine ("Waterframe") in 1769 , James Hargreaves , also from England, in 1764 the famous " Spinning Jenny ", which established itself as a machine in the domestic industry. Samuel Crompton's " Mule " finally combined elements of both machines. This machine replaced hand spinning. Coarse and fine, soft and firm weft and warp yarns could be produced with it.
From 1771 onwards, with the simultaneous mechanization of looms, the world's first textile factories were built in England, initially operated with water power and from 1780 with steam engines. It was mainly women and children who made the first “machine yarn” quickly, cheaply and in good quality. As a result, most of the weirdos and weavers in the house industry lost their livelihoods and fell into poverty, which triggered social unrest and machine storms.
literature
- Rudi Palla: The lexicon of the lost professions . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-8289-4152-4 .