In 1700 it took one spinner and one weaver to make one roll of cloth. By 1733, the Flying Shuttle had been invented. This improved the weaving technique but pressured the spinners who had to work harder.
The Spinning Jenny was invented by James Hargreaves in 1764, the Spinning Jenny was designed to have a carriage that pulled away raw cotton, draw it out into a thin thread, and then wound around a spindle as the carriage returned. The new method increased the spinners output by ten-fold.
The Spinning Jenny was named after his daughter who one day knocked over his sewing machine.
The water frame was made in 1769 by Richard Arkwright. The water frame involved three sets of paired rollers that turned at different speeds. While these rollers produced yarn of the correct thickness, a set of spindles twisted the fibres firmly together. The machine was able to produce a thread that was far stronger than that made by the Spinning-Jenny produced by James Hargreaves. It as powered by water, and if there was no water there was no work to be done.
In 1775 Samuel 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. 14 weavers were needed for this invention.
The Power Loom, invented by Edmund Cartwright, was an important industrial machine. Edmund opened a weaving mill in Doncaster and began using steam engines produced by James Watt and Matthew Boulton, to drive his Power 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. It also reduced the number of weavers needed to back to one.
