"[The] Industrial Revolution... opened an age of... production for the needs of the masses."
Ludwig von Mises, economist
Spinner and carpenter James Hargreaves (1720-1778) invented this multispool spinning wheel as a way of increasing the productivity of his cotton factory in Lancashire. The "spinning jenny" had eight spindles, all of which could be operated by a single person, who rolled a beam back and forth over the yarn until it was the correct thickness. The machine increased the production of spun yarn eightfold. One story has it that a daughter of Hargreaves knocked over a spinning wheel, and he noticed that it continued to work perfectly well. This led him to consider a machine with multiple spindles, all in an upright position.
The machine was so successful that yarn prices fell,
upsetting the spinning community in the area. Several spinners broke into Hargreaves's house and destroyed his machines, causing him to move to Nottingham where, in 1767, he began making spinning jennies. Three years later he applied for a patent for his invention but failed in his attempt to sue local manufacturers who were using copies of his machine. Hargreaves died in 1778, the year Samuel Crompton invented an even more efficient spinning machine that was dubbed the "spinning mule."
