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operated, are now in the old mill in Pawtucket, and are frequently shown to visiters as choice curiosities. I conversed with the son of E. Carpenter, in whose shop S. Slater built his machinery, who was the clothier, and then a boy; he was permitted to see the first yarn spun, about which he told me, and observed that listing was used for belts. The following description will aid in understanding the engraving.

Water-spinning. It received this name, from being the first done by a water-wheel, and was patented by R. Arkwright.

Carding. After the cotton is picked, the usual process is to card it; first, by a carding machine, called a breaker; and a second time on another, called a finisher. The breaker consists of a larger and smaller cylinder. The larger, or main cylinder, is covered with sheet cards, and moves at a considerable velocity; the lesser, or doffing cylinder, is covered with a spiral fillet of card, wound round it, and moves slowly. These cylinders revolve in opposite directions, and nearly in contact with each other. Over the main cylinder, is a kind of arch, covered with cards, at rest, called the top-cards. The cotton is fed by means of rollers into the main cylinder. The main cylinder lays it on the doffing cylinder, from which it is combed, and in an uniform fleece is wound round a cylinder, or sometimes, instead of it, on a perpetual cloth. After this cylinder or cloth has made a certain number of revolutions, and thereby plying or doubling, (the fourth elementary process,) the cotton is broken off, and is in that state, called a lap, ready to be carried to the finisher. The finisher is similar to the breaker, only that the fleece, instead of forming a lap, is gradually brought into a narrow band or sliver, and is compressed by a pair of rollers, which deliver it into a tin can, which is afterwards removed to the drawing frame.

The drawing frame. In this machine, drawing first occurs. Drawing is a curious contrivance, and is the ground-work or principle of Arkwright's patent, for it is used in the roving and spinning, as well as in the drawing frame. It is an imitation of what is done by the finger and thumb, in spinning by hand, and is performed by means of two pair of rollers. The upper roller of the first pair is covered by leather, which being an elastic substance, is pressed, by means of a spring or weight. The lower roller, made of metal, is fluted, in order to keep a firm hold of the fibres of the cotton. Another similar pair of rollers are placed near to those we have been describing. The second pair moving at a greater velocity, pull the fibres of the cotton from the first pair of rollers. If the surface of the last pair move at twice or thrice the

velocity of the first pair, the cotton will be drawn twice or thrice finer than it was. This relative velocity is called the draught of the machine. This mechanism being understood, it will be easy to conceive the nature of the operation of the drawing-frame. Several of the narrow ribands or slivers from the cards, (or as they are sometimes termed, card ends,) by being passed through a system of rollers, are thereby reduced in size. By means of a detached single pair of rollers, the reduced ribands are united into one sliver. These operations of drawing and plying serve to equalise the body of cotton, and to bring its fibres more on end, which, in the card ends, were crossed in all directions. These slivers are again combined and drawn out, so that one sliver of the finisher's drawing contains many plies of card-ends. Hitherto the cotton has got no twist, but is received into moveable tin cans or canisters, similar to those used for receiving the cotton from the cards; sometimes, however, it does receive a small degree of twist in the finishing drawing.

Roving. The roving is a process similar to the drawing, only that it always communicates a degree of twist to the cotton. The roves are wound up on bobbins, and are then ready to be spun. The operation of winding is in some cases performed by hand, and in others by power. The bobbins containing the rove are placed on the back part of the spinning frame. The spinning is little more than a repetition of the process gone through in making the rovings. The spinning frame contains rollers similar to those of the drawing and roving frames, which serve to extend the rove, and reduce it to the required fineness; at the same time it is twisted by means of a spindle, but of a different kind from that of the common jenny.

Previously to the year 1767, spinning was performed on the domestic one-thread wheel, of which there were two kinds. The first, which had a simple spindle, required the material to be previously carded; and, as we have seen, the common jenny was founded upon this simple machine. The second, was the flaxwheel, which was used for other substances that, from their nature, but more particularly for the length of staple, did not admit of carding, but were prepared by an operation resembling combing.

The spindle of this machine had a bobbin and fly, which served to wind up the yarn as fast as it was spun. This last kind of spindle is that which was adopted by Arkwright in his mode of spinning. When the bobbins are full, they are taken off the spindles in order to be reeled.

The reeling is performed on a machine consisting of six wooden rails, parallel to the axis, which winds a considerable number of threads at once from the bobbins. It is one yard and a half in circumference, and is of such a length as to give room for the skeins without danger of the threads getting foul of each other. At one end of the axis is wheel-work, constructed to strike a check at every eighty revolutions of the reel. These eighty revolutions form a lay or rap, of 120 yards in length, and seven of these lays constitute a skein, which measures 840 yards. Water-twist is generally spun hard, and in that case is used for purposes requiring much strength, such as the warps of fustians, calicoes, &c. A softer kind of water-twist, which is very uniform and even in its thread, is used, when doubled and slightly turned, for making stockings, and is denominated stocking-yarn. The lower numbers are sometimes used single, and are called double-spun. Watertwist is used of all sizes, from No. 6. to No. 60. The above description answers precisely to the state of Arkwright and Strutt's mills in England, in 1790, and describes exactly the machinery which Mr. Slater constructed in Pawtucket, during that year.

It is known, that Mr. Peel, as early as the year 1762, with the assistance of Hargreaves, erected a carding engine with cylinders, at Blackburn, which differed very little from the one now used, except that it had no mechanism for detaching the cotton from the cards, an operation which was performed by women with handcards. Afterwards, this was done by the application of a roller with tin plates, like the floats of a water-wheel, which, revolving with a quick motion, scraped the cotton off the cards. The first inventor of the cylinder cards, or the carding engine, was probably Mr. Wyatt. But the carding engine was greatly improved by Arkwright; in place of the roller with tin plates, he substituted a metal plate toothed at the edge like a comb, which, instead of being made to revolve like the other, was moved rapidly in a perpendicular direction, by a crank, and with slight, but reiterated strokes, detached the cotton from the cards in a uniform fleece. In place of the sheet cards, with which the doffing cylinder had hitherto been covered, he employed narrow fillet cards, wound round it in a spiral form; by this contrivance a continuity of the fleece was produced, which, as it left the card, was gradually contracted by the conductor, and delivered by rollers into the can, in the form of a continued carding, or rowan, called a card end. The taking off the cotton from the cards, in this manner, is one of the most beautiful and curious operations in the whole process of cotton spinning, and renders the carding engine

one of the most important machines employed in the process. Carding engines have sometimes been made to consist of one large cylinder, and a number of smaller ones, called urchins, disposed of at proper distances over above the main cylinder, and revolving in opposite directions to it, but nearly in contact; by which means the cotton was delivered from cylinder to cylinder, until it came to the finishing cylinder, called the doffer-from which it was taken off by the comb.

At present, carding engines are generally made to consist of only two cylinders; sometimes three-one at the feeding rollers. But the main cylinder is covered with a kind of arch, composed of several pieces of wood called tops, which have no motion, having sheet cards fixed on them, and nearly in contact with the main cylinder. If any machine in the whole process of cotton spinning be of more use and importance than another, it is the carding engine, nor do I see how its use can at all be dispensed with; and in fact it may be said, that the process of cotton spinning, (properly speaking) begins only at the carding; for all the previous departments of the process are merely preparatory to this, and consist, chiefly, in mixing, cleaning and opening the cotton, so as that the cards may take the best effect upon it; and therefore are called the preparation. Previous to the cotton being put through the cards, the fibres may be lying in every direction into which they may accidentally be thrown; but the use of the carding engine is to draw out the fibres of the cotton, to straighten and lay them side by side, and form them into a thread commonly called an end; and this is the first formation of the thread of yarn. It is first begun in the cards, and advanced onward, step by step, through each successive machine in its order, until it is completed. When the fibres are properly straightened, and the end equally formed at the cards, there is good reason to expect a superior quality of yarn, but failing this, an inferior quality is unavoidable; for no skill or attention applied to any subsequent department of the process, can altogether remedy the injuries the cotton may have sustained in this: hence it is an object of the highest importance in cotton spinning, to have the cards always properly set, and adjusted to suit the particular kind of cotton used, and the quality of the yarn required.

In the adjusting and fitting up of cards, great care should be taken to have all their parts properly leveled; the bite of the feeding rollers should especially be on a perfect level with the centre of the main cylinder, and both cylinders should be turned to the perfect truth, and always kept so if possible; but, through the

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