The spinning mule

technology · earth · Bolton, Lancashire, England

Samuel Crompton's machine of 1779, called a mule because it crosses the two lines it descends from: the jenny's moving carriage, which draws the yarn out, and the water frame's rollers, which feed it. The combination spins yarn that is both strong and very fine, and it is the mule rather than the water frame that let Britain undercut Indian muslins — the finest counts in the world until then — in their own export markets. Crompton had no capital to patent it and released the design in return for a subscription raised among manufacturers which never came close to its value; Parliament voted him a grant decades later. Mule spinning also had a social consequence built into its mechanics: until self-acting versions appeared in the 1820s and 1830s the carriage had to be worked by an operator with strength and judgement, and mule spinners became a skilled, well-paid and overwhelmingly male occupation in an industry whose workforce was otherwise largely women and children.