Scan and page transcript from:
Historical Sketches of Oldham by Edwin Butterworth
Pub. 1856
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tion, about 340,000. The population of the town of Rochdale in 1755 was about 2000 ; present population, 32,000.** I have now arrived at the memorable era when the domestic system of manufacture was beginning to be superseded by the mill system - when the inventions of spinning by rollers and spindles were introduced, and when buildings much larger than cottages (consisting at first chiefly of one or two stories) became necessary for the purpose of carrying on the processes of the cotton trade. "The cotton manufacture, though rapidly increasing, could never have received such an extension as to become of great national importance, without the discovery of some method of producing a greater quantity and better quality of yarn with the same labour. The fly shuttle, invented by Mr. John Kay, of Bury, came into general use about 1760, and greatly facilitated the process of weaving. The invention of spinning by rollers originated with Mr. John Wyatt, of Birmingham, before 1738. The first patent for spinning by that method was taken out in the name of Lewis Paul, a foreigner, in 1738, for a period of fourteen years. The first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of human fingers, was spun in a small building near Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire. in 1733, by John Wyatt, by means of a machine of rollers of about two feet square. The wool was carded in the common way, and was passed between two cylinders, whence the bobbin drew it by means of the twist. In 1741 or 1742 a large warehouse near the well in the Upper Priory in Birmingham, was converted into the first cotton mill, where Wyatt's machine was turned by two asses walking round an axis, and ten girls were employed in attending to the work. This establishment languished a short time and then expired. The machinery 111 |
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