Hargreaves devises the spinning jenny
A hand frame carrying multiple spindles, which allowed one spinner to draw and twist several threads at once and relieved the yarn shortage created by faster weaving. The conventional date is around 1764 and the patent was taken out in 1770. It required no power source and no factory, which is why the earliest mechanisation of textiles left the domestic system intact.
Uncertain — sources disagree, or the dating is contested. Stated here, not resolved.
Subjects
- The spinning jenny · technology · United Kingdom · not located
- The British textile industry · industry sector · United Kingdom · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
Supports the high-wage-economy explanation of why mechanisation was profitable in Britain first, the sequence of textile bottlenecks, and the dating and interpretation of the Engels pause. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session — outbound HTTP to research domains is blocked by the environment's egress proxy and the session's WebSearch budget was exhausted before this pack began. The book is a real and widely held title, but nothing attributed to it here was read from it.
Cambridge University Press · 2009 · Partly verified
Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2009 (New Approaches to Economic and Social History)
Recorded on The spinning jenny
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- The Great Exhibition · 1 May – October 1851
- Cartwright patents the power loom · 1785
- Arkwright's patents are overturned · 1785
- The rotative engine turns a shaft · 1781–1782
- Crompton completes the spinning mule · 1779
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes · 1721