The water frame is a spinning frame that is powered by a water-wheel. Water frames in general have existed since Ancient Egypt times.

Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. He is credited as the driving force behind the development of the spinning frame, known as ...

, who patented the

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in 1769, designed a model for the production of cotton thread; this was first used in 1765. The Arkwright water frame was able to spin 96 threads at a time, which was an easier and faster method than ever before. The design was partly based on a spinning machine built for Thomas Highs by clockmaker John Kay, who was hired by Arkwright. Being run on water power, it produced stronger and harder yarn than the then-famous "

spinning jenny The spinning jenny is a multi- spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764 or 1765 by James Hargreaves in Stan ...

", and propelled the adoption of the modern factory system. Another water-powered frame for the production of textiles was developed in 1760, in the early industrialized town of

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(now in

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), by German bleach plant owner Johann Heinrich Bockmühl. The name ''water frame'' is derived from the use of a water wheel to drive a number of spinning frames. The water wheel provided more power to the spinning frame than human operators, reducing the amount of human labor needed and increasing the spindle count dramatically. However, unlike the spinning jenny, the water frame could spin only one thread at a time until 1779, when Samuel Compton combined the two inventions into his

spinning mule The spinning mule is a machine used to spin cotton and other fibres. They were used extensively from the late 18th to the early 20th century in the mills of Lancashire and elsewhere. Mules were worked in pairs by a minder, with the help of tw ...

, which was more effective. The water frame was originally powered by horses at a factory built by Arkwright and partners in Nottingham. In 1770 Arkwright and his partners built a water-powered mill in Cromford, Derbyshire.

Cromford

In 1771, Arkwright installed the water frame in his cotton mill at Cromford,

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, on the River Derwent, creating one of the first factories that was specifically built to house machinery rather than just bringing workers together. It was one of the first instances of the working day being determined by the clock instead of the daylight hours, of people being employed rather than just contracted. In its final form, combined with his carding machine, it was the first factory to use a continuous process from raw material to finished product in a series of operations. Arkwright played a significant part in the development of the factory system as he combined water power, the water frame, and continuous production with modern employment practices.

International success

The water frame played a significant role in the development of the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...

– first in England, but soon also in continental Europe after German entrepreneur Johann Gottfried Brügelmann managed to find out details of the technology, which had been kept very secret – disclosure of details was punishable by death penalty. Brügelmann managed to build working waterframes and used them to open the first spinning factory on the continent, built 1783 in Ratingen and also named "Cromford", from where the technology spread over the world. The factory building today hosts a museum, which is the world's only place to see a functioning waterframe. Samuel Slater brought the water frame to America, circumventing the 1774 English ban on textile workers leaving and memorizing details of its construction; he left for

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in 1789. Moses Brown and Slater partnered to create the Slater Mill in Pawtucket in 1793, the first water-powered machine to make thread in America.

References

External links

Demonstration of water frame

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*Cromford Mills World Heritage Site, https://www.cromfordmills.org.uk/ {{Lancashire Cotton Textile machinery Spinning English inventions History of the textile industry Industrial Revolution in England