Short answers, pulled from the story.
John Lombe was an English silk spinner born in Norwich in approximately 1693 and died on the 20th of November 1722 in Derby. He travelled to Italy on behalf of his half-brother Thomas Lombe to study Italian power-spinning machinery for organzine thread, helping bring that technology to England at a time when domestic demand for spun silk was outstripping supply.
Lombe investigated Italian machines used for spinning organzine, the raw silk warp thread required for weaving fine silk cloth. The Italians had used power-spinning since the early 15th century, with the technique described by Vittorio Zonca. Lombe returned to England with enough knowledge to replicate those machines.
In 1718, Thomas Lombe obtained a patent for silk-throwing machinery, granted for a term of fourteen years. The patent covered the machinery that John Lombe had studied during his time in Italy.
Lombe's Mill was completed in 1722 on the River Derwent in Derby. It was built by the engineer George Sorocold on the site of an earlier, unsuccessful silk mill that Sorocold had previously constructed for Thomas Cotchett.
John Lombe died suddenly in 1722, aged around twenty-nine. According to legend, the King of Sardinia, having learned of the Lombes' successful use of Italian silk-spinning techniques, sent a female assassin to England to kill the brothers.
A bas-relief sculpture of John Lombe is located on Exeter Bridge in Derby. It marks the city where he worked and where Lombe's Mill was built along the River Derwent.