FROM FIBER TO FABRIC - MACHINES
T IS NOT very long since the spinning wheel and
the clacking loom were an indispensable furnishing of every farmhouse
and of many city dwellings as well. With infinite patience the fleece of
sheep, the lint of flax, the filaments of silk and the fibers of cotton
were spun into yarn and then woven into cloth, and it was the nimble
fingers of the housewife that carried the process through from the
matted raw product to the finished garment.
It is comparatively easy to comprehend the development of machines for dealing with such gross material as earth, rock, iron, and wood, but when we come to consider the infinitely delicate and almost imponderable fibers that go to make up our textiles, the marvel is that any but highly skilled human hands, guided by keen eyesight, could combine the tangled and obstreperous filaments into fine yarn and weave this yarn into complicated patterns of cloth. But the spinning wheel and hand loom could not stand long in the path of power-driven machinery, and now huge, blind machines, with stiff, unbending fingers of metal, comb out the matted masses of raw material, remove the dirt and twigs, straighten out the snarls far quicker and better than could be done by hand, and transform the fibers into beautiful fabrics such as in former days would have been the envy of kings.
[269]
We cannot attempt to describe all the machinery involved in the spinning and weaving of yarn, but it is highly important that every well-informed person have a general knowledge of textile machinery. Because cotton cloth is more widely used than either linen or wool, we shall confine ourselves to the cotton branch of the textile industry, particularly as the difference between the treatment of cotton and other textile materials lies chiefly in the preparation of the thread or yarn.
The predominance of cotton among textiles may be traced back to the invention of a young New Englander fresh from college, who went to Georgia as a private tutor, only to find when he got there that some one else had been engaged in his stead, leaving him stranded and practically penniless in a strange land. We had occasion to refer to this man in Chapter III. Eli Whitney was a born mechanic, and before entering college had not only shown great skill but had actually built up a thriving business in the manufacture of nails, hatpins and knife blades.
His attention having been brought to this matter, Whitney undertook to design a machine which would remove the fiber from the seed in a small fraction of the time required by hand labor. He was visiting at the time at the plantation of Mrs. Greene, widow of General Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame, and he set himself to the task with such limited materials and tools as he could find on the estate. In a couple of weeks he had built a model which contained all the essentials of the modern cotton gin, with which a single man could separate more cotton in a day than could be produced by hand in a whole season. This was in the winter of 1792. The effect of the invention was felt immediately. Cotton production had been falling off steadily. In 1791, 189,316 pounds of cotton had been exported. The next year there was a falling off to 138,328 pounds, but following the introduction of the cotton gin exports rose to 487,000 pounds in 1793, 1,681,000 in 1794, and 6,276,000 in 1795. Fifty years later the world production amounted to 1,169,600,000, nearly seven-eighths of which was contributed by the United States, and of this only a small amount was Sea Island cotton.
A cotton gin (Fig. 65) consists of a gang of circular saws (A), with forwardly pointed teeth which pass between the ribs of an inclined grating (B) that forms the floor of a chamber (C) known as a roll box. In this box is mounted a toothed roller (D). The cotton is fed into the box and the fibers are seized by the teeth of the saws and dragged through the grating while the seeds, being too[271] large to pass through, are left behind and, rolling down the grating, drop into a hopper. The action of the saws is such as to impart a rolling motion to the mass of cotton, and hence to the roller in the roll box. This tends to drag the cotton into the roll box and bring fresh supplies to the saws. The fleece carried by the saw teeth is beaten off by a wheel (E) fitted with wire brushes. These brushes, traveling in the same direction as the saw teeth, but at a higher velocity, readily disengage the fibers from the teeth and create an air blast that blows the cotton fleece out of the gin.
A system of “counts” is used to indicate the size of yarn and it is based on the number of hanks it takes to make a pound. A hank is always 840 yards and 50’s would mean that the yarn is of such fineness that it would take 50 × 840 yards (=4,200 yards) of it to weigh a pound. Yarn below 30’s is graded as coarse; between 30’s and 60’s as medium and above 60’s as fine. To prepare cotton as it comes from the bale for a fine yarn of, say, 100’s, it must go through no less than sixteen machines before it reaches the mule.
We have not the space to describe all of these machines, but in general it will suffice to say that the cotton is graded by passing it through a series of pickers. These machines throw out the fibers and beat them so as to knock out the impurities and, at the same time, a blast of air blows out the dust. The cotton is treated by a number of such machines in succession and is finally delivered in a broad sheet known as a “lap,” after which it passes through the carding machine which combs out the tangled bunches and removes further impurities from the lap. The lap is then gathered into a compact rope known as a “sliver.” The sliver goes through the drawing rolls which serve to parallelize the fibers and make the sliver of even thickness, and at the same time to give a moderate amount of twist so that it will hold together, and it issues from the machine as “roving.” In the case of fine yarn the sliver issuing from the carding[273] machine goes through a combing machine so as to remove the finer fibers. The bobbins of the roving are then placed in the spinning machine, which may be either the spinning mule or the ring spinning machine. The principal difference between the two is that the spinning mule is intermittent in its operation, while the ring spinner not only spins the roving into yarn but at the same time winds it up on a bobbin.
[275]
[276]
The continuously operating ring-spinning machine is provided with a ring frame (Figure 68) around the cop or spindle. This frame, together with the spindle, revolves at high speed, but as the ring revolves a little more slowly than the spindle it winds the yarn comparatively slowly upon the spindle or bobbin.
[278]
Every industry has a vocabulary of its own to furnish names for
its machine parts and products peculiar unto itself, and in this respect
the textile industry is by no means an exception. The threads that run
lengthwise in a piece of woven cloth are known as the “weft,” “woof” or
“filling.” In the loom the warp threads are threaded through loops on
what are known as “heddles”; in fact, there are two “heddles,” A and B, Figure 69. Alternate warp threads (C) pass through the loops of one heddle, and the other threads through the loops[279] on the other heddle. When one heddle is raised and the other lowered, the threads form a wedge-shaped space (D)
which is known as a “shed.” The filling thread is sent through the shed
and is then pressed closely into the wedge-shaped space against the
cloth already woven by means of a “reed” (E) which is a comblike
member with teeth or flat pieces of metal that pass between the warp
threads. This done, the position of the heddles is reversed, so that A is now lowered and B
raised, thus binding the warp thread in place and forming another shed
for the next warp thread; and thus the process continues.
The filling thread is placed in a shuttle (F) which carries a bobbin on which the thread is wound. As the shuttle is thrown back and forth through the shed, the thread is unwound and trails behind it. Formerly the shuttle was thrown back and forth by hand, but years ago, long before the invention of the steam engine, the flying shuttle was invented. In other words, a mechanism was provided for striking the shuttle a blow and throwing it across the warp from side to side. By this means the speed of operations was greatly increased.
About the middle of the eighteenth century the drop box was invented. This consists of a receptacle for shuttles carrying different colors of thread which may be selected in a definite order and thrown back and forth so as to vary the pattern of the cloth.
In present looms a special machine is provided for taking the threads from the bobbins or cops and laying them in an even sheet to form the warp of the loom. These are wound on a beam and the[280] machine is known as a beam warper. As the threads are apt to be somewhat fuzzy it is necessary to size them, and a machine known as a slasher is employed for this purpose. This machine coats each thread of warp yarn with a sizing compound or an adhesive and dries the sheet of warp preparatory to its use in the loom.
In common weaving the weft or filling threads run alternately under and over the warp threads with perfect regularity. A pattern can be formed by passing the weft threads under and over alternate groups of warp threads, and this is effected in the ordinary loom by threading the weft in groups through the heddles, i. e., instead of having every second thread pass through one heddle and the intervening threads through the other heddle; the threads are arranged in alternate groups of two or more. This gives a regular pattern, but it may be varied to form ornamental designs if the groups are varied. Such designs used to be worked out by hand very slowly and laboriously, with the result that figured weaving was very expensive.
The “brains” of the Jacquard loom is a set of pasteboard cards that are perforated in accordance[281] with a prearranged design. The warp threads, instead of being passed through the loops of two heddles, are passed through what might be termed individual heddles, one for each thread, or for a small group of threads. These consist of cords in each of which is an eyelet through which the warp thread passes. The cord is weighted at its lower end and its upper end is fastened to a hook in a box at the top of the machine. The hooks engage transverse bars known as “griffes” or “knives,” and when the griffes are raised, the hooks engaging them are also raised. In this way the warp threads that pass through the eyelets that are connected to the hooks are raised. But running horizontally across the hooks there are “needles” or rods with eyelets or bends in them through which the hooks pass. These needles may be moved lengthwise to make the hoops engage or disengage the knives. The mechanism is illustrated in Figure 70, where the knives are shown in section at A, the hooks at B and the needles at C. For the sake of simplicity only eight hooks and needles are shown; in actual practice there are hundreds in a single machine. At the right-hand end of each needle there is a spring which pushes the needle toward the left, thereby bringing the hook through which it passes into position to be lifted by its griffe. At the left-hand side of the machine there is a card (D) which presses back the needles and thereby bends the hooks out of position to engage the griffes. However, there are perforations in the card through which certain of the needles can pass, letting the hooks they control engage the needles. The cards thus select the particular weft threads that are to be raised. In our illustration most of the needles[282] have entered holes in the card, but the second, fourth and sixth from the top have been pushed back by the blank wall of the card and their hooks have been bent back clear of the griffes. Only four cards are shown in the drawing arranged in a four-sided box or “cylinder,” and the cards are successively presented to the needles. For more elaborate designs a large number of cards are used, arranged in a slatted belt, and these come successively into position. As many as thirty thousand cards have been employed to carry out a single pattern.
There is another less pleasant version of the story to the effect that Lee became so attached to his knitting machine that he neglected the girl. However, in either case, love was somehow mixed up in the invention of the knitting machine.
We are not going to attempt to delve into the complicated mechanism of a modern knitting machine, but will merely call attention to the fact that modern machines perform automatically practically all the movements of the human hand in hand knitting.
The tendency of modern machinery has been to relieve the housewife of the tedious work she formerly performed and to take such work away from the home to the factory. There is one important machine, however, which has been introduced into the home, apparently to stay; for in the majority of houses it is still considered indispensable. It is a fact that the introduction of labor-saving machinery into the household has, until recently, met with stern opposition on the part of the housewife. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that in the middle of the nineteenth century the sewing machine began successfully to invade the home.
[284]
The next notable improvement in sewing machinery was that of the rotary bobbin, invented by A. B. Wilson, which was patented in 1852. This did away with the flying shuttle and simplified the machine considerably. It made the sewing machine comparatively quiet, thus adapting it for domestic[285] use. In Wilson’s machine, a rotating hook passed through the loop of thread and carried it around the bobbin on which the lower thread was wound. Wilson also invented the four-motion feed for feeding the cloth under the needle. Sewing machines up to that time had been operated by hand, but Isaac Merritt Singer introduced a foot-power machine and by progressive business methods built up a thriving industry and did much to establish the sewing machine, not only at home, but abroad as well.
The guiding of the cloth to produce the required design is accomplished either by hand or automatically. In the hand-guided schiffli machine a skilled “stitcher” seated at one side of the machine operates a pantagraph, tracing an enlarged design mounted on a board before him. As he moves the lever vertically and horizontally the frame carrying the cloth is correspondingly moved before the needles. An expert stitcher can put a great deal[287] of individuality into the work, which is impossible in the strictly automatic machine; accordingly the pantagraph is used for the finer grades of embroideries. In the automatic machines a perforated roll like that of a piano player is used. The perforations control the movements of the frame that carries the fabric.
Laces are very ingeniously produced on schiffli machines by using the “burnt-out” system invented forty years ago by a German, named Beckel. This[288] consists in the use of thread of a different material from that of the fabric, and after the embroidery is completed the fabric is removed either chemically or by the application of heat, leaving only the stitching, which forms a delicate lace. For instance, cotton thread may be embroidered on a groundwork of wool, or silk thread is used on a fabric of cotton. Laces made in this way are known as Plauen laces, taking their name from the city where Beckel invented the process, and they form a large part of the machine-made laces that are now so widely used.
It is comparatively easy to comprehend the development of machines for dealing with such gross material as earth, rock, iron, and wood, but when we come to consider the infinitely delicate and almost imponderable fibers that go to make up our textiles, the marvel is that any but highly skilled human hands, guided by keen eyesight, could combine the tangled and obstreperous filaments into fine yarn and weave this yarn into complicated patterns of cloth. But the spinning wheel and hand loom could not stand long in the path of power-driven machinery, and now huge, blind machines, with stiff, unbending fingers of metal, comb out the matted masses of raw material, remove the dirt and twigs, straighten out the snarls far quicker and better than could be done by hand, and transform the fibers into beautiful fabrics such as in former days would have been the envy of kings.
[269]
We cannot attempt to describe all the machinery involved in the spinning and weaving of yarn, but it is highly important that every well-informed person have a general knowledge of textile machinery. Because cotton cloth is more widely used than either linen or wool, we shall confine ourselves to the cotton branch of the textile industry, particularly as the difference between the treatment of cotton and other textile materials lies chiefly in the preparation of the thread or yarn.
The predominance of cotton among textiles may be traced back to the invention of a young New Englander fresh from college, who went to Georgia as a private tutor, only to find when he got there that some one else had been engaged in his stead, leaving him stranded and practically penniless in a strange land. We had occasion to refer to this man in Chapter III. Eli Whitney was a born mechanic, and before entering college had not only shown great skill but had actually built up a thriving business in the manufacture of nails, hatpins and knife blades.
INVENTION OF THE COTTON GIN
The agricultural condition of Georgia and its neighboring States at the time that Whitney arrived there was very poor. There was no market for their products. A splendid cotton, with fibers from 1⅜ to 2½ inches long, was growing on the islands along the coast, but this cotton could not be raised inland. The upland product, known as “green seed” cotton, had a fiber only half as long as the “Sea Island” cotton, but the principal drawback to its use was the difficulty of separating the fiber from the seed. It was a day’s work[270] for one woman to separate a single pound of the “green seed” cotton fiber.His attention having been brought to this matter, Whitney undertook to design a machine which would remove the fiber from the seed in a small fraction of the time required by hand labor. He was visiting at the time at the plantation of Mrs. Greene, widow of General Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame, and he set himself to the task with such limited materials and tools as he could find on the estate. In a couple of weeks he had built a model which contained all the essentials of the modern cotton gin, with which a single man could separate more cotton in a day than could be produced by hand in a whole season. This was in the winter of 1792. The effect of the invention was felt immediately. Cotton production had been falling off steadily. In 1791, 189,316 pounds of cotton had been exported. The next year there was a falling off to 138,328 pounds, but following the introduction of the cotton gin exports rose to 487,000 pounds in 1793, 1,681,000 in 1794, and 6,276,000 in 1795. Fifty years later the world production amounted to 1,169,600,000, nearly seven-eighths of which was contributed by the United States, and of this only a small amount was Sea Island cotton.
A cotton gin (Fig. 65) consists of a gang of circular saws (A), with forwardly pointed teeth which pass between the ribs of an inclined grating (B) that forms the floor of a chamber (C) known as a roll box. In this box is mounted a toothed roller (D). The cotton is fed into the box and the fibers are seized by the teeth of the saws and dragged through the grating while the seeds, being too[271] large to pass through, are left behind and, rolling down the grating, drop into a hopper. The action of the saws is such as to impart a rolling motion to the mass of cotton, and hence to the roller in the roll box. This tends to drag the cotton into the roll box and bring fresh supplies to the saws. The fleece carried by the saw teeth is beaten off by a wheel (E) fitted with wire brushes. These brushes, traveling in the same direction as the saw teeth, but at a higher velocity, readily disengage the fibers from the teeth and create an air blast that blows the cotton fleece out of the gin.
FIG. 65—SECTIONAL VIEW OF A COTTON GIN
PREPARING COTTON FOR THE SPINNING MULE
Cotton as it comes from the bale is a compact, matted mass, mixed with bits of seed, leaves, sand, and other impurities, and it must pass through a[272] number of machines before it comes out as a pure, light, fleecy product, with the fibers combed parallel. Even for a medium yarn a dozen machines are required to prepare the cotton for the spinning mule.A system of “counts” is used to indicate the size of yarn and it is based on the number of hanks it takes to make a pound. A hank is always 840 yards and 50’s would mean that the yarn is of such fineness that it would take 50 × 840 yards (=4,200 yards) of it to weigh a pound. Yarn below 30’s is graded as coarse; between 30’s and 60’s as medium and above 60’s as fine. To prepare cotton as it comes from the bale for a fine yarn of, say, 100’s, it must go through no less than sixteen machines before it reaches the mule.
We have not the space to describe all of these machines, but in general it will suffice to say that the cotton is graded by passing it through a series of pickers. These machines throw out the fibers and beat them so as to knock out the impurities and, at the same time, a blast of air blows out the dust. The cotton is treated by a number of such machines in succession and is finally delivered in a broad sheet known as a “lap,” after which it passes through the carding machine which combs out the tangled bunches and removes further impurities from the lap. The lap is then gathered into a compact rope known as a “sliver.” The sliver goes through the drawing rolls which serve to parallelize the fibers and make the sliver of even thickness, and at the same time to give a moderate amount of twist so that it will hold together, and it issues from the machine as “roving.” In the case of fine yarn the sliver issuing from the carding[273] machine goes through a combing machine so as to remove the finer fibers. The bobbins of the roving are then placed in the spinning machine, which may be either the spinning mule or the ring spinning machine. The principal difference between the two is that the spinning mule is intermittent in its operation, while the ring spinner not only spins the roving into yarn but at the same time winds it up on a bobbin.
FIG. 66.—ARKWRIGHT’S DRAWING ROLLS
ARKWRIGHT’S DRAWING ROLLS
The first advance over the old-fashioned spinning wheel, which dates back to the fifteenth century, was in 1770, when the first spinning jenny was invented by Hargreaves. This consisted practically of a multiple spinning wheel by which one man could spin a large numbers of bobbins of yarn at the same time. It was at about the same time that[274] Arkwright invented the drawing rolls which have played a most important part in the preparation of yarn, and this invention is worthy of our attention because it contains an interesting mechanical principle. As shown in Figure 66, a number of pairs of rolls are provided through which the roving passes, but successive pairs operate at higher velocities. Thus, the second pair of rollers through which the roving passes run at a little higher speed than the first pair, the third a little higher than the second pair, and so on. As a result, the roving is drawn out by the operation and issues from the last pair of rollers at a higher speed than it entered the first pair of rollers. The only way in which it can accommodate itself to this accelerated motion is to be attenuated or drawn out. Weights are used, as shown in the drawing, to press the upper rollers against the lower ones.THE SPINNING MULE
Shortly after Arkwright’s invention came the mule spinner, invented by Crompton between 1774 and 1779. Machines operated on the same general principle as this are in general use to-day. In the old-fashioned method of spinning by hand the worker took a small quantity of cotton, pulled it out into a long sliver, attached one end to a bobbin and gave the bobbin a twirl between his hands in order to spin the fiber into yarn; then the yarn was wound up on the bobbin and the process was repeated. The spinning mule does practically the same thing, but infinitely faster and on a much larger scale. As shown in Figure 67, the bobbins of roving (A) are mounted on a stand and passed through a set of drawing rolls (B) which are regulated to pull the rovings out to the desired thickness of yarn. The roving then passes to the nose of a “cop,” or spindle (C), which is revolved at very high speed. The cop is carried by a carriage (D) which moves away from the bobbins of roving to the position indicated by dotted lines, while the cop is revolving. The cop has a travel of about five feet during the time the yarn is drawn out and spun. Then the carriage moves back toward the stand upon which the bobbins of roving are mounted and the spun yarn is wound up on the cop. The reason the yarn does not wind up on the cop while it is spinning is because it runs to the nose of the cop and, at each turn of the cop, the coil twists on the nose and slips off. On the return of the carriage, however, a set of wires (E), called “fallers,” press the yarn down so that the revolving cop will wind up the slack.[275]
FIG. 67.—DETAILS OF A SPINNING MULE
The continuously operating ring-spinning machine is provided with a ring frame (Figure 68) around the cop or spindle. This frame, together with the spindle, revolves at high speed, but as the ring revolves a little more slowly than the spindle it winds the yarn comparatively slowly upon the spindle or bobbin.
WOVEN, BRAIDED, KNITTED, AND NET GOODS
Having now produced our yarn, we may pause to consider the different types of fabric into which it may be formed, and to draw a distinction between, woven, braided, knitted, and net goods. In weaving we have two sets of threads, one set running transversely to the other; in braided materials the threads all run longitudinally and are arranged to cross each other diagonally, so that they are interwoven;[277] in knitting and netting there is a single thread. In the case of netting this thread is knotted where it loops back upon itself, whereas in knitting it is merely looped without knotting.THE LOOM
The loom can trace its genealogy away back to early Babylonian times, and the modern power-driven machine does not differ in its broad principles of operation from its ancient progenitor—the hand loom.
FIG. 68.—RING-SPINNING FRAME
FIG. 69.—THE HEDDLES OF A LOOM
The filling thread is placed in a shuttle (F) which carries a bobbin on which the thread is wound. As the shuttle is thrown back and forth through the shed, the thread is unwound and trails behind it. Formerly the shuttle was thrown back and forth by hand, but years ago, long before the invention of the steam engine, the flying shuttle was invented. In other words, a mechanism was provided for striking the shuttle a blow and throwing it across the warp from side to side. By this means the speed of operations was greatly increased.
About the middle of the eighteenth century the drop box was invented. This consists of a receptacle for shuttles carrying different colors of thread which may be selected in a definite order and thrown back and forth so as to vary the pattern of the cloth.
In present looms a special machine is provided for taking the threads from the bobbins or cops and laying them in an even sheet to form the warp of the loom. These are wound on a beam and the[280] machine is known as a beam warper. As the threads are apt to be somewhat fuzzy it is necessary to size them, and a machine known as a slasher is employed for this purpose. This machine coats each thread of warp yarn with a sizing compound or an adhesive and dries the sheet of warp preparatory to its use in the loom.
In common weaving the weft or filling threads run alternately under and over the warp threads with perfect regularity. A pattern can be formed by passing the weft threads under and over alternate groups of warp threads, and this is effected in the ordinary loom by threading the weft in groups through the heddles, i. e., instead of having every second thread pass through one heddle and the intervening threads through the other heddle; the threads are arranged in alternate groups of two or more. This gives a regular pattern, but it may be varied to form ornamental designs if the groups are varied. Such designs used to be worked out by hand very slowly and laboriously, with the result that figured weaving was very expensive.
THE JACQUARD LOOM
At the French Exposition of 1801 a loom was exhibited that made a sensation. With seemingly human intelligence it selected individual warp threads or groups of threads and raised them or lowered them so as to work out elaborate ornamental designs. The inventor, Joseph Marie Jacquard, of Lyons, received a medal for his marvelous invention and was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor.The “brains” of the Jacquard loom is a set of pasteboard cards that are perforated in accordance[281] with a prearranged design. The warp threads, instead of being passed through the loops of two heddles, are passed through what might be termed individual heddles, one for each thread, or for a small group of threads. These consist of cords in each of which is an eyelet through which the warp thread passes. The cord is weighted at its lower end and its upper end is fastened to a hook in a box at the top of the machine. The hooks engage transverse bars known as “griffes” or “knives,” and when the griffes are raised, the hooks engaging them are also raised. In this way the warp threads that pass through the eyelets that are connected to the hooks are raised. But running horizontally across the hooks there are “needles” or rods with eyelets or bends in them through which the hooks pass. These needles may be moved lengthwise to make the hoops engage or disengage the knives. The mechanism is illustrated in Figure 70, where the knives are shown in section at A, the hooks at B and the needles at C. For the sake of simplicity only eight hooks and needles are shown; in actual practice there are hundreds in a single machine. At the right-hand end of each needle there is a spring which pushes the needle toward the left, thereby bringing the hook through which it passes into position to be lifted by its griffe. At the left-hand side of the machine there is a card (D) which presses back the needles and thereby bends the hooks out of position to engage the griffes. However, there are perforations in the card through which certain of the needles can pass, letting the hooks they control engage the needles. The cards thus select the particular weft threads that are to be raised. In our illustration most of the needles[282] have entered holes in the card, but the second, fourth and sixth from the top have been pushed back by the blank wall of the card and their hooks have been bent back clear of the griffes. Only four cards are shown in the drawing arranged in a four-sided box or “cylinder,” and the cards are successively presented to the needles. For more elaborate designs a large number of cards are used, arranged in a slatted belt, and these come successively into position. As many as thirty thousand cards have been employed to carry out a single pattern.
FIG. 70.—DETAIL OF A JACQUARD LOOM
INVENTION OF THE KNITTING MACHINE
We are wont to call Necessity the Mother of Invention; in many cases Laziness has given rise to valuable inventions, but according to legend, Cupid[283] played the leading rôle in the development of the knitting machine. It is said that in 1589 William Lee of England fell in love, but the girl who was the object of his devotion was always so busy with her knitting that she could not give him the attention he sought or thought he deserved. However, Lee was not to be thwarted in this fashion, so he built a machine to do the knitting in order that the girl could devote herself more completely to him.There is another less pleasant version of the story to the effect that Lee became so attached to his knitting machine that he neglected the girl. However, in either case, love was somehow mixed up in the invention of the knitting machine.
We are not going to attempt to delve into the complicated mechanism of a modern knitting machine, but will merely call attention to the fact that modern machines perform automatically practically all the movements of the human hand in hand knitting.
The tendency of modern machinery has been to relieve the housewife of the tedious work she formerly performed and to take such work away from the home to the factory. There is one important machine, however, which has been introduced into the home, apparently to stay; for in the majority of houses it is still considered indispensable. It is a fact that the introduction of labor-saving machinery into the household has, until recently, met with stern opposition on the part of the housewife. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that in the middle of the nineteenth century the sewing machine began successfully to invade the home.
[284]
HOWE’S INVENTION OF THE SEWING MACHINE
It was in 1844 that Elias Howe hit upon the brilliant idea of putting an eye at the point of a needle. This enabled him to produce a successful sewing machine, because it was unnecessary for him to pass the needle completely through the cloth in order to pull the thread through it. When the needle point penetrated the cloth a shuttle passed through the loop of thread that was carried through with the point. This shuttle carried a second thread which interlocked with the thread of the needle forming what is known as a “lock stitch.” In Howe’s machine the cloth was held vertically and the needle which was curved was carried by a lever. The needle was driven through the cloth with a swinging motion, somewhat like that of a pick-ax. The shuttle was driven back and forth by a pair of strikers after the manner of the flying shuttle of a loom. George Fisher, a friend of Howe, furnished $500 with which the first successful machine was built in 1845, and with this machine Howe sewed two suits of clothes, one for Mr. Fisher and the other for himself. A public exhibition was held at which the machine, crude as it was, beat five of the best hand-sewers that could be found. In 1863 Howe was reaping a fortune in royalties from his machine which were estimated at $4,000 per day.The next notable improvement in sewing machinery was that of the rotary bobbin, invented by A. B. Wilson, which was patented in 1852. This did away with the flying shuttle and simplified the machine considerably. It made the sewing machine comparatively quiet, thus adapting it for domestic[285] use. In Wilson’s machine, a rotating hook passed through the loop of thread and carried it around the bobbin on which the lower thread was wound. Wilson also invented the four-motion feed for feeding the cloth under the needle. Sewing machines up to that time had been operated by hand, but Isaac Merritt Singer introduced a foot-power machine and by progressive business methods built up a thriving industry and did much to establish the sewing machine, not only at home, but abroad as well.
THE SINGLE-THREAD SEWING MACHINE
The single-thread machine was invented by a Virginia farmer who had never seen a sewing machine. James E. A. Gibbs had seen a picture of a sewing machine and, unaware of the fact that there was a shuttle carrying a second thread on the rear, or under side of the cloth, fell to puzzling over the problem of what happened to the thread carried by the needle through the cloth. Somehow, it seemed to him, the loop of thread must be held until the next stitch carried another loop of thread through it, thus forming a chain stitch. This led him to invent an ingenious revolving hook. With infinite patience he whittled out a model of his invention, and it is this hook that is the outstanding feature of the Wilcox and Gibbs machine.MACHINE-MADE EMBROIDERIES
A notable modern development of the sewing machine is its adaptation to the making of embroideries and even laces. In the common domestic sewing machine the cloth is fed step by step under the needle, and the length of the step regulates the[286] size or length of the stitches. The feed may be set for short or long stitches. It is evident that if a greater range of length of stitch were provided, and if, while the machine was operating, the stitch could be varied at will, not only in length but in the direction as well, it would be possible to work out elaborate patterns of embroidery. This is what is done on the power-driven embroidery machines. Like the original Howe machine, the cloth is held vertically and a series of needles are used which pass horizontally through the cloth. As the needle retreats, the thread it carries forms a loop on the rear or “wrong” side of the cloth, and through this a shuttle is driven which carries a thread wound upon a bobbin. Between stitches the cloth is moved this way and that, in accordance with a prearranged pattern, and thus the design is embroidered. A single machine may have several hundred needles and, as they all work in unison, each needle repeats the design. The arrangement is such that one needle starts where the next one leaves off, so that the embroidery is continuous. The shuttles which operate on the wrong side of the cloth are small, boat-shaped parts which the Swiss have named “schiffli” or “little ships,” and this name has come to be applied to the whole machine.The guiding of the cloth to produce the required design is accomplished either by hand or automatically. In the hand-guided schiffli machine a skilled “stitcher” seated at one side of the machine operates a pantagraph, tracing an enlarged design mounted on a board before him. As he moves the lever vertically and horizontally the frame carrying the cloth is correspondingly moved before the needles. An expert stitcher can put a great deal[287] of individuality into the work, which is impossible in the strictly automatic machine; accordingly the pantagraph is used for the finer grades of embroideries. In the automatic machines a perforated roll like that of a piano player is used. The perforations control the movements of the frame that carries the fabric.
FINE NEEDLEWORK BY MACHINE
These machines are of Swiss and German design, but American inventors have recently developed a machine for producing fine needlework which imitates very closely the work of the hand. In this machine the needle passes completely through the fabric as in ordinary hand sewing, but it does not have to be turned around for the return stitch because it is pointed at each end and has the eye in the middle. The needles are held by spring clips in a swinging frame. When the frame swings toward the cloth the needles are pushed through the fabric and their points are caught by spring clips in a frame on the opposite side. The latter frame draws the needles completely through and a set of hooks catch the thread and pull the stitch taut. The advantage of this type of machine is that it produces the same design on each side of the cloth; in other words, there is no “wrong” side to the embroidery. The design is controlled by a “stitcher” operating a pantagraphic system of levers and by skillful manipulation he can completely overcome the flat machinelike appearance of the automatic schiffli machine.Laces are very ingeniously produced on schiffli machines by using the “burnt-out” system invented forty years ago by a German, named Beckel. This[288] consists in the use of thread of a different material from that of the fabric, and after the embroidery is completed the fabric is removed either chemically or by the application of heat, leaving only the stitching, which forms a delicate lace. For instance, cotton thread may be embroidered on a groundwork of wool, or silk thread is used on a fabric of cotton. Laces made in this way are known as Plauen laces, taking their name from the city where Beckel invented the process, and they form a large part of the machine-made laces that are now so widely used.
SAWING LOGS INTO 16-INCH LENGTHS PRIOR TO GRINDING THEM INTO PULP
Copyright Kadel & Herbert
THE HEATER IN A PULP MILL WHERE THE WOOD PULP IS MIXED WITH CLAY
A MODERN FOURDRINIER PAPER-MAKING MACHINE
by A. Russell Bond
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