Arkwright, Richard

Richard (1732-1792), an English inventor. A native of Lancashire. Arkwright appears to have been a workingman's thirteenth child, bred with little schooling to the trade of a barber. He made a little money by some method of his own for dyeing hair. Arkwright lived in a weaving country, and, having an inventive nature, he hit upon a device for producing fine thread. An acquaintance had already invented machinery for twisting cotton thread, but it was still too coarse for the threads of warp that run lengthwise of a web. Arkwright caught an idea from seeing red hot bars of iron pressed into thin sheets by running between successive pairs of rollers, each pair set closer than the preceding pair. He conceived the simple idea that if the amount of cotton going to make an ordinary thread be fed between a pair of slow going rollers and be caught by a second pair of rollers going at ten times the speed, the cotton would be strung out to make a thread of one-tenth the weight. By this simple device of feeding through two pair of rollers, the second pair geared at a high speed, he found that he could produce cotton thread of uniform size and, within reasonable limits, of any weight desired. We cannot go into the particulars of opposition from spinners who thought their occupation and wages gone; of wealthy manufacturers who dreaded competition and expense of new machinery. Arkwright's patents were fought from court to court, his mills were burned by infuriated workmen, but toward the end he triumphed over ignorance, custom, and wealth. He built and organized a factory recognized as the type of today, and, what is of less importance, he became wealthy, held office, and was knighted by his sovereign. See Hargreaves