The development of the Arkwright water frame made available the first continuous spinning process which could be operated by machine minders rather than skilled operatives.
Arkwright’s first patent, which he obtained in July 1769, was for a machine which spun yarn by means of rollers, flyers and bobbins. The cotton was “drawn” by pairs of rollers, each successive pair moving faster than the preceding one, with twist added by bobbins and flyers. The front pair of rollers was weighted by lead weights hooked over the top roller. This prevented the twist running back up the roving and forcing the rollers apart. The top roller was covered with leather and the bottom one fluted so that the cotton was held firmly as it passed between the two.
The production models used the basic drafting head shown in the patent drawing mounted side by side on a wooden frame and driven from a water wheel by gearing, wooden line shafting and belts.
Joseph Wright’s portrait of Sir Richard shows
his subject
and, by his side, the invention on which his fame
and
fortune were based. In selecting the drafting head
(the
roller device), as the icon of
his subject’s achievement,
and in painting it so
accurately, Joseph Wright
demonstrated a genuine
understanding of the Arkwright spinning process.
The
production models of the water frame varied in size
from four spindles to the ninety-six spindle machine,
an example of which, from Cromford Mill, is preserved
at the
Helmshore Higher Mill Museum in Lancashire. The
factory
masters found it an advantage to have frames of
more than
one size so that they could produce yarns in varying
degrees
of thickness, known in
the trade as counts, in
appropriate quantities according to the demands of the market.
Once Arkwright had successfully adapted his spinning machine to factory production, he turned his attention to the preparatory processes which precede spinning in the production of yarn. The need had become acute. Until carding and roving could be mechanised to keep pace with spinning, continuous production, the essence of the factory system, could not be achieved. Arkwright’s solutions to these problems were set out in his second patent which he obtained in 1775. This comprised a series of devices with which he addressed the technical problems of opening and cleaning the cotton; carding, a process by which all the fibres are laid parallel; and the creation of slivers and rovings, the loose, slightly twisted ropes of fibre which formed the raw material for the spinning frames.
By no means all Arkwright’s solutions were effective. His attempts to mechanise opening and cleaning failed and these, the first stages in making ready the raw cotton, continued to be performed by hand until the 1790s when the first successful batting machines became available.
Overall his achievement was remarkable, both in
its
immediate affect and in its longevity. Some of
Arkwright’s
inventions such as the crank and comb continued
in use on carding machinery until 
the
middle of the twentieth
century. The Arkwright
system, or “package” of
processes has been, and
remains, of the greatest
significance to the world’s
textile industries. The
improvements that
Arkwright made to carding
were ultimately applied to
all textile fibres other than
monofilaments and the
modern machine is a
recognisable descendent of Arkwright’s first
factory models. Roller
drawing, too, had a wider application and was adapted to deal with
other fibres.
It remained a key component of the mule, of the
throstle
and of the ring frame, the most important devices
by far in
the spinning of cotton, wool, flax, jute and waste
silk, as
well as of chopped synthetic fibres.
The
international implications of Arkwright’s
inventions
were wide-spread and extended beyond the immediate
economic effects of technological transfer as the
Arkwright
system became established in countries outside
Great
Britain. The factory production of cotton yarn
also led to
cotton becoming the most important textile fibre
in the
world for a period of more than a century and the
impact of large scale cultivation on
countries such as the United
States, Egypt and India was
profound.
The Arkwright
system made possible the
production of cheap clothing
and household textiles for a
wide cross-section of the
population, improving comfort
and personal hygiene.
