Inventors

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James Watt
	James Watt, the son of a merchant, was born in Greenock, Scotland, in 1736. At the age of nineteen Watt was sent to Glasgow to learn the trade of a mathematical-instrument maker. After spending a year in London, Watt returned to Glasgow in 1757 where he established his own instrument-making business. Watt soon developed a reputation as a high quality engineer and was employed on the Forth & Clyde Canal and the Caledonian Canal. He was also engaged in the improvement of harbours and in the deepening of the Forth, Clyde and other rivers in Scotland.
In 1763 Watt was sent a Newcomen steam engine to repair. While putting it back into working order, Watt discovered how he could make the engine more efficient. Watt worked on the idea for several months and eventually produced a steam engine that cooled the used steam in a condenser separate from the main cylinder.  For the next eleven years these machines were mainly sold to colliery owners who used them to pump water from their mines. Watt's machine was very popular because it was four times more powerful than those that had been based on the Thomas Newcomen design. Watt continued to experiment and in 1781 he produced a rotary-motion steam engine. Whereas his earlier machine, with its up-and-down pumping action, was ideal for draining mines, this new steam engine could be used to drive many different types of machinery. Richard Arkwright was quick to importance of this new invention, and in 1783 he began using Watt's steam-engine in his textile factories. Others followed his lead and by 1800 there were over 500 of Watt's machines in Britain's mines and factories.

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Richard Arkwright
Richard Arkwright,  the youngest of thirteen children was born in Preston in 1732. Richard's parents were very poor and could not afford to send him to school and instead arranged for him to be taught to read and write by his cousin Ellen. Richard became a barber's apprentice. However, he was an ambitious young man and had a strong desire to run his own company. In 1762 Arkwright started a wig-making business. This involved him travelling the country collecting people's discarded hair. While on his travels, Arkwright heard about the attempts being made to produce new machines for the textile industry.
Arkwright also met John Kay, a clockmaker from Warrington, who had been busy for some time trying to produce a new spinning-machine with another man, Thomas Highs of Leigh. Kay and Highs had run out of money and had been forced to abandon the project. Arkwright was impressed by Kay and offered to employ him to make this new machine. Arkwright also recruited other local craftsman to help, and it was not long before the team produced the Spinning-Frame. The machine was able to produce a thread that was far stronger than that made by the Spinning-Jenny produced by James Hargreaves. In 1769 Arkwright went to Ichabod Wright, a banker from Nottingham, in search of funds to expand his business. Wright introduced Arkwright to Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need. Strutt and Need were impressed with Arkwright's water-frame and agreed to form a partnership. Arkwright's Spinning-Frame was too large to be operated by hand and so the men had to find another method of working the machine. After experimenting with horses, it was decided to employ the power of the water-wheel. In 1771 the three men set up a large factory next to the River Derwent in Cromford, Derbyshire. Arkwright's machine now became known as the Water-Frame.

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Edmund Cartwright
	Edmund Cartwright, the son of a large landowner from Marnham, Nottingham, was born in 1743. His brother, John Cartwright, was later to become one of the leaders of the parliamentary reform movement. After being educated at University College, Oxford, Cartwright became rector of the church at Goadby Marwood in Leicestershire. In 1784 Cartwright visited a factory owned by Richard Arkwright. Inspired by what he saw, he began working on a machine that would improve the speed and quality of weaving. Employing a blacksmith and a carpenter to help him, Cartwright managed to produce what he called a power loom. He took out a patent for his machine in 1785, but at this stage it performed poorly.
In 1787 Cartwright opened a weaving mill in Doncaster and two years later began using steam engines produced by James Watt and Matthew Boulton, to drive his looms. All operations that had been previously been done by the weaver's hands and feet, could now be performed mechanically. The main task of the weavers employed by Cartwright was repairing broken threads on the machine. Although these power looms were now performing well, Cartwright was a poor businessman and he eventually went bankrupt. In 1799 a Manchester company purchased 400 of Cartwright's power looms but soon afterwards their factory was burnt to the ground, probably by workers who feared they would lose their jobs. This incident influenced other manufacturers from not buying Cartwright's machines. By the early part of the 19th century a large number of factory owners were using a modified version of Cartwright's power loom. When Cartwright discovered what was happening he applied to the House of Commons for compensation. Some MPs such as Robert Peel, who had been one of those who had made a great deal of money from the modified power loom, supported his claim and in 1809 Parliament voted him a lump sum of £10,000. Edmund Cartwright then retired to a farm in Kent and died in 1823.

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Henry Cort
Henry Cort was born in Lancaster in 1740. In 1765 he was employed as an agent for the Royal Navy in London, a position that made him aware of the poor quality of British iron compared to the iron that was imported from abroad.  Henry began experimenting on and improving the manufacture of English iron. In 1775 he gave up his job as agent for the Navy and set up his own business, a forge and iron mill, in Portsmouth harbour.
Between 1783 and 1784,  he took out patents for the processes he had developed which improved the quality of bar iron. One patent process involved the production of bar iron by hammering at a perfect welding heat and rolling out all the impurities. This produced iron that had been compressed into a tough and fibrous state. The second patent involved the manufacture of bar iron from ore or cast iron in a reverberating or air furnace without a blast. During this process the liquid iron was constantly stirred with iron bars burning off the carbon from the cast iron and the iron was separated from the slag. This was then hammered and rolled. By the end of the 19th century Britain was producing 4 million tons of iron per year, which was more than the entire production of all the other European countries. Henry was granted a government pension in 1794 to support his wife and family of twelve children thent died in 1800. In 1820 there were at least 8,200 of Cort's furnaces operating in Great Britain and many of the actual iron manufactures considered that Cort's greatest achievement would have to have been his rolling process.

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Abraham Darby

Abraham Darby invented coke smelting in 1709 and advanced the mass production of brass and iron goods. Coke smelting replaced charcoal with coal in metal foundries during the process of refining metals; and this was important to Britain's future since charcoal at that time was becoming scarce and was more expensive. Abraham Darby scientifically studied brass production and was able to make advances in that industry that turned Great Britain into an important brass goods exporter.

Darby founded the world's first metallurgy laboratory at his Baptist Mills Brass Works factory, where he refined brass making. He developed the process of sand molding that allowed iron and brass goods to be mass produced at a lower cost per unit. Before Abraham Darby, brass and iron goods had to be individually cast. Darby received a patent for his sand casting in 1708. Abraham combined the existing technologies of casting iron with casting brass that produced goods of a greater intricacy, thinness, smoothness, and detail. This proved  important to the steam engine industry that came later, Darby's casting methods made the production of the iron and brass steam engines possible.

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John Kay

John Kay, the twelfth child of a Yeoman farmer, was born near Bury in Lancashire in about 1704. Little is known about his early life but he was living in Bury in 1730 when he patented a machine for twisting and cording mohair and worsted. For centuries handloom weaving had been carried out on the basis of the shuttle bearing the yarn being passed slowly and awkwardly from one hand to the other. In 1733 Kay patented his flying shuttle that dramatically increased the speed of this process. Kay placed shuttle boxes at each side of the loom connected by a long board, known as a shuttle race. By means of cords attached to a picking peg, a single weaver, using one hand, could cause the shuttle to be knocked back and forth across the loom from one shuttle box to the other. A weaver using Kay's flying shuttle could produce much wider cloth at faster speeds than before. Some woollen manufacturers used Kay's flying shuttle but were reluctant to pay him royalties. The costs of using the courts to obtain the money owed to him nearly ruined Kay. In 1753 Kay's house in Bury was ransacked by a mob of textile workers who feared that his machines would destroy their livelihood. Deeply depressed about these events, John Kay left England for France where he is believed to have died a pauper in about 1780.

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James Hargreaves

James Hargreaves was born near Blackburn in about 1720. Hargreaves received no formal education and was unable to read or write. He worked as a carpenter and weaver but had a strong interest in engineering. By the 1760s Hargreaves was living in the village of Stanhill and was one of the many weavers who owned his own spinning wheel and loom. It is claimed that one day his daughter Jenny accidentally knocked over over the family spinning wheel. The spindle continued to revolve and it gave Hargreaves the idea that a whole line of spindles could be worked off one wheel. In 1764 Hargreaves built what became known as the Spinning Jenny. The machine used eight spindles onto which the thread was spun from a corresponding set of rovings. By turning a single wheel, the operator could now spin eight threads at once. The thread that the machine produced was coarse and lacked strength, making it suitable only for the filling of weft, the threads woven across the warp. Originally Hargreaves produced the machine for family use but when he began to sell the machines, spinners from Lancashire, fearing the possibility of cheaper competition, marched on his house and destroyed his equipment. Hargreaves did not apply for a patent for his Spinning Jenny until 1770 and therefore others copied his ideas without paying him any money. Hargreaves moved to Nottingham where he erected a small spinning-mill. Others began to make improvements to the Spinning Jenny and the number of threads was increased from eight to eighty. By the time James Hargreaves died in 1778, over 20,000 Spinning Jenny machines were being used in Britain.

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Samuel Crompton
Samuel Crompton, the son of a small farmer, was born in Firwood, Bolton, in 1753. Later he moved to Darwen, a small village 9 miles north of Bolton. After working at various jobs he set out to invent a spinning machine that would improve on the Spinning Jenny that had been produced by James Hargreaves. In 1775 Crompton produced his spinning mule, so called because it was a hybrid that combined features of two earlier inventions, the Spinning Jenny and the Water Frame. The mule produced a strong, fine and soft yarn which could be used in all kinds of textiles, but was particularly suited to the production of muslins. Crompton was too poor to apply for a patent and so he sold the rights to a Bolton manufacturer. The first mules were hand-operatedand could be used at home.
By the 1790s larger versions were built with as many as 400 spindles. David Dale was quick to see the potential of the mule and purchased several for his factory in New Lanark, Scotland. The Spinning Mule could also be driven by the new steam engines that were being produced by James Watt and Matthew Boulton. A large number of factory owners purchased Crompton's mules, but because he had sold the rights for his machine, he made no money from these sales. Robert Peel was one of those who felt sorry for Crompton and in 1812 arranged for the House of Commons to grant him a reward of £5000. Crompton used the money to invest in a cotton factory but the venture ended in failure. Samuel Crompton died in poverty in Bolton in 1827.

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Eli Whitney
	Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Mass., on Dec. 8, 1765.  He graduated from Yale College in 1792 and by April 1793 had designed and constructed a machine called a cotton gin that quickly and easily separated cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. Whitney's cotton gin was capable of maintaining a daily output of 23 kg of cleaned cotton, and its effect was far-reaching, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the first time. Whitney, however, failed to profit from his invention. Numerous imitations appeared, and his 1794 patent was not validated until 1807.
Though perhaps best known for his invention of the cotton gin, Eli Whitney's greatest innovation pioneered the era of mass production and modern manufacturing methods.  Eli Whitney died on Jan. 8, 1825.

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