Curated category
History of the textile industry
- Roberts LoomRichard Roberts was born at Llanymynech, on the border between England and Wales. His father William Roberts worked as a shoemaker and kept the New Bridge…
- Spinning (textiles)Archaeologists discovered the oldest known twisted fiber in southern France, dating it to between 50,000 and 40,000 BCE.
- Beverly Cotton ManufactoryIn 1787, Thomas Somers and James Leonard arrived in Beverly to build the first cotton mill in America. They recruited a group of investors including Capt.
- Cotton-spinning machineryThe spinning wheel appeared in the Islamic world by 1030. It traveled to China by 1090 and reached Europe and India during the 13th century.
- Lowell, MassachusettsIn 1823, the Boston Associates named a new mill town after Francis Cabot Lowell, who had died five years prior. Nathan Appleton and Patrick Tracy Jackson led…
- Pawtucket, Rhode IslandThe name Pawtucket comes from an Algonquian word meaning river fall. American Indians caught salmon and smaller fish that gathered at these falls long before…
- Textile manufacture during the British Industrial RevolutionIn 1734, John Kay stood in a workshop in Bury, Lancashire, and invented the flying shuttle. This device allowed a single weaver to produce cloth twice as…
- CromfordThe River Derwent flows southward from its sources on Bleaklow in the Dark Peak. This fast-moving water has cut a deep valley through limestone geology in…
- Slater MillSamuel Slater stood in Belper, England, as a young apprentice under industrialist Jedediah Strutt. He memorized the design of cotton spinning machines…
- CottonopolisRichard Arkwright opened the world's first steam-driven textile mill on Miller Street in Manchester in 1781. This single building marked a turning point from…
- Uxbridge, MassachusettsIn September of 1663, John Eliot sold the Squimshepauk plantation to settlers for twenty-four pounds sterling. This transaction marked the beginning of…