He was described as "stout, broadest man of about five-foot ten, or rather more". He married Elizabeth Grimshaw and had 13 children. He was illiterate and worked as a hand loom weaver for most of his life.
The idea for the Spinning Jenny came about when he knocked over his wife's spinning wheel. He and his wife worked for a man named Mr. Peel, in a cotton mill, and had to hand their work in each day. The making of cotton included two processes, the spinning and weaving, all which had to be done t home. One day he knocked over the spinning wheel, he noticed that the wheel and spindles kept spinning and just stared at it, while his wife exclaimed, "What's gotten into you?!" He soon realised that if he added eight more spindles, his wife could spin eight more threads, instead of spinning one at a time, therefore bringing more money in for him and his family. So when his wife handed her threads in, everyone was so amazed by her work, but James and Elizabeth wanted to keep it secret, because if everyone could make eight times the amount of thread, then thread prices would go down, and their family would be making as much as they were before. But in a close-knit town, where everyone could walk into each others houses, it was difficult to keep a secret. Elizabeth Grimshaw was so proud of her husband, and one time she was talking to her friends about her work, blurted it out. Now everyone knew. Many people had realised his great idea, and all the women were asking their husbands to build them Spinning Jennies, so James got no credit for it. The rest of England took hold of this idea, until the factory owners got tired of these new Spinning Jennies, because they worried that people would lose interest in handmade products, and they would lose their jobs, so an angry mob swarmed through the streets, going into James and Elizabeth's house, but James had anticipated this, and they stayed at a friends place, while the mob wrecked everything they could find, including the Spinning Jenny. James decided it was not safe for him and his family to live in Lancashire any longer, so the decided to move elsewhere, to Nottingham, England, where James tried to patent his invention, so that if anyone wanted to use his idea, they had to pay him a fee, to come to the conclusion that he could not, for other people had already made it. It is sad to think, that after all his work, he got paid nothing, and died a poor man on the 22 April 1778, and to think that he changes everything today jus by knocking over his wife's spinning wheel. {from one perspective, as the naming of the Spinning Jenny has different ideas and concepts.} Bibliography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hargreaves http://www.madehow.com/inventorbios/72/James-Hargreaves.html
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDear Reader(s), Archives
February 2017
Categories |