Suddenly, farms were producing bigger crops. One of the most important of these crops was cotton.
Cotton was used for everything from clothing to sails for ships. Now that there was more cotton, people wanted to find ways to turn it into useful products more quickly. So what happened next?.
The Flying Shuttle.
In 1733 a watchmaker made a shuttle that moved back and forth on wheels. The flying shuttle, as it was called was little more than a boat-shaped piece of wood to which yarn was attached yet it allowed a weaver to work twice as fast.
The Spinning Jenny.
The spinners could not keep up with the weavers. A reward was offered to the person who could produce a better spinning machine. .
In 1764 James Hargeaves invented a new spinning wheel. He called it the Spinning "Jenny" in honor of his wife. This simple machine allowed a worker to spin 6 or 8 threads at a time. Later models could spin as many as 80 threads.
Richard Arkwright.
In 1769 Richard Arkwright invented the Water Frame. The water frame used water from a near-by stream to operate the spinning wheels.
Result: spinning could be done by a machine instead of a person, so owners could spin more cotton.
What happened next?.
Samuel Crompton.
In 1779, Samuel Crompton combined features of the spinning jenny and the water-frame to produce the Spinning Mule. It was so named because, just as a mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey, this machine was the offspring of two inventions. The mule made thread stronger and finer than earlier machines.
Flying Shuttle .
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In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle, an improvement to looms that enabled weavers to weave faster. The original shuttle contained a bobbin on to which the weft (weaving term for the crossways yarn) yarn was wound. It was normally pushed from one side of the warp (weaving term for the the series of yarns that extended lengthways in a loom) to the other side by hand. Large looms needed two weavers to throw the shuttle.