the industry and have been recognized throughout the manufacturing world. Not only did two distinguished Americans, Francis C. Lowell and Patrick T. Jackson, practically reinvent the power-loom, in 1813, as applied to cotton goods, but another, an adopted citizen, William Crompton, first adapted the power-loom to the weaving of fancy woolen fabrics, and to-day the two principal
Fig. 21.—Hand-loom of 1750. (From Hogarth's Two Apprentices.)
makes of American looms, the Crompton and the Knowles, are generally recognized as superior to any foreign patterns and are largely used in foreign mills.[1] Crompton's fancy power-loom was applied to woolen fabrics in 1840. "Not a yard of fancy woolen fabrics had ever been woven by a power-loom in any country," wrote Samuel Lawrence, "until it was done by William Crompton at the Middlesex Mills, in Lowell, in 1840." It was affirmed before a congressional committee in 1878 that "upon a Crompton loom, or looms based upon it, are woven every yard of fancy cloth in the world." The importance of this contribution to the wool manufacture can only be appreciated in connection with the fact that three quarters of all the woolen cloths now worn are woven upon fancy looms. Up to that time it had been
- ↑ Over eight thousand of the Knowles open-shed fancy looms are now in operation in England.
