Lewis Paul

• 1. Introduction

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  Lewis Paul died in 1759, and he is credited as the original inventor of roller spinning. That idea later became the basis of the water frame, the machine that spun cotton in a cotton mill. Yet his name is far less familiar than the man whose machine eventually made the technique famous. Who was Paul, and who helped him build his idea? Where did the first cotton mill actually stand, and what became of it? And how much of his work survives in the machines that came after him?

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• 2. Huguenot Beginnings

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  Paul was of Huguenot descent, and his father served as physician to Lord Shaftesbury. The source says he may have begun designing a spinning machine for cotton as early as 1729. Real progress probably waited until after 1732. That was the year he met John Wyatt, a carpenter then working in Birmingham for a gun barrel forger. Wyatt had designed a machine, probably meant for cutting files, and Paul took an interest in it. From that meeting the roller spinning idea began to take practical shape.

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• 3. The Patent and the Machine

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  On the 24th of June 1738, Paul obtained a patent for roller spinning. The idea was certainly his, but Wyatt built the machine for him, or at least a model of it. Having secured the patent, Paul set about licensing his invention. Some of those licences were granted only in satisfaction of debts. In 1741 he set up a machine powered by two asses in the Upper Priory in Birmingham. It stood near his house in Old Square. Water power would soon give the technology a larger stage.

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• 4. The First Cotton Mill

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  Edward Cave, a publisher, took out a licence and installed machines in a warehouse in London. In 1742 he acquired Marvel's Mill on the River Nene at Northampton. He rebuilt it to hold four or five water-powered spinning machines, each carrying 50 spindles. That made it the first cotton mill. Cave died on the 10th of January 1754, and the mill passed to his brother William and his nephew Paul. Samuel Touchet, a London merchant, held it until 1755 but made no profit. It may then have been let to Lewis Paul, who died in 1759. The Caves forfeited the lease for non-payment of rent in March 1761 and advertised the mill to let in November of that year. By 1768 it had gone back to being a corn mill.

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• 5. The Leominster Mill

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  A second mill worked under Paul's patent at Leominster. John Bourn built it in 1744, in partnership with Henry Morris of Lancashire. It did not last long. The mill burnt down in November 1754. By then, Paul and a Bourn had already turned their attention to the step that comes before spinning.

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• 6. Carding Machines

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  In 1748, Daniel Bourn and Lewis Paul separately obtained patents for carding machines. These were presumably used in the Leominster and Northampton mills respectively. The source holds that their carding technology seems to be the basis of later carding machines. So Paul's reach extended beyond spinning rollers and into the preparation of the fibre itself.

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• 7. Legacy and Arkwright

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  The principle of Paul's rolling spinning process was perfected by John Kay and Thomas Highs, and promoted by Richard Arkwright. Paul's own machine seems to have been only modestly profitable. It remains unclear how far his work is reflected in Arkwright's far more successful water frame, patented in 1769. Arkwright later added a carding stage to his machinery, as Paul and Bourn had done. He tried to use it to extend his patent rights beyond the expiry of his original patent. That attempt failed, because the improvement was not his invention.

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