746

MANUFACTURES.

Manufac. more looms ; and this productive branch of business at' ll res ' , Udino was, in consequence, so much deranged that themasters removed with their looms to Gradisca, wherethe inhabitants of Udino were obliged to purchase suchstockings as they had occasion for. It appears furtherthat, some years after this, one Abraham Jones carriedthe stocking weaving to Amsterdam , but that, in a shorttime, he and his assistants were carried off by a pestilen-tial disease, and that these looms were returned to Eng-land, no one in Amsterdam knowing how to use, andFrench much less how to repair them.

claim to the We have said the honour of this discovery was with-invention. out dispute due to Lee, but it ought rather to have beensaid that it was undoubted, but not entirely undisputed •;and that we may not be supposed to take a partial viewof the case, it may be well to conclude our sketch witha quotation from Beckmann, who observes, after statingmany of the preceding facts, “ It appears to me, there-fore, proved beyond all doubt, that the stocking loomwas invented by William Lee about the end of theXV'Ith Century ; and this is admitted by some French writers, such as Voltaire and the Editor of the Encyclo­ pedic , whom the author of the Encyclopedic Metho-dique, however,finds fault with. Other French writers,who are the more numerous party, wish to ascribe thehonour of this invention to one of their own Countrymen,but the proofs they bring are so weak that they scarcelydeserve any notice. Savary is perhaps the first person whoventured to support this instance of Gallic vanity; at allevents, he is quoted by the more modern writers as theirauthority when they wish to contradict the English '.

“ According to his account a Frenchman , of whom,however, he knows nothing further, invented the stockingloom, but not being able to obtain the exclusive privilegeof using it in his own Country went to England. Theutility of it being,soon discovered there, it was forbidden,under pain of death, to carry the loom, or a model of it,out of the Kingdom. But another Frenchman , respect-ing whom he is equally ignorant, having seen the loom,the form of it made so strong an impression on hismind that, on his return, he copied it exactly, and fromthis loom all the others made in France and Hollandwere constructed. Savary adds, ‘ Did the invention be-long to the English , who are accustomed to pay duehonour to those who discover useful things, they un-doubtedly could tell the name of the inventor, which,however, they are not able to do.’ It is very strangethat this should be written by a Frenchman , who him-self did not know the name of the French inventor, orof the person who carried back the invention. No orderto prevent the exportation of the stocking loom wasissued in England so early as Cromwell’s time, other-wise it would certainly have been mentioned in the pe-tition presented to him. It was not till the eighth yearof the reign of William III. , that is, 1696, when loomswere every where common, that the exportation of themwas forbidden, probably because the best were made inEngland, and it was wished that the gradual improve-ment in them should be kept a secret.

“ Some have endeavoured to give an air of probability to the above assertion of Savary, by the re-lation of an apothecary in the H<5tel Dieu at Paris .This person is said to have declared that the inventorwas a journeyman locksmith, in Lower Normandy ,who ga/e a pair of silk stockings, his own workmanship,to Colbert, in order that they might be presented toLouis XII . but as the marchands bonneliers, who

dealt in articles knit after the old manner, caused seve- ^“^ esses .ral of the loops of these stockings to be cut by some of .the servants at Court , whom they had bribed for thatpurpose, they did not meet with approbation. The in-ventor was so hurt by this disappointment that he soldthe loom to an Englishman, who died an old man in theHotel Dieu, where the apothecary became acquainted withhim. It was necessary to expose the lives of many work-men, and even some men of learning, in order to bringback the loom to France . Romd de la Platiere adds thathe heard at Nismes that, in the time of Colbert, a personof that place, named Cavallier, carried the first loom toFrance , and that iri the course of fifty years the num-ber of them in that town and neighbourhood increasedto some thousands. It appears much more probable,however, as Savary asserts, that the stocking manufac-ture was established at the castle of Madrid , in the Bois Boulogne , near Paris , in the year 1656, under the direc-tion of John Hindres.” Beckmann, History of In-ventions, vol. iv.

It must be seen, however, after all, that the whole ofthis French history is void of any written document orauthority, and is at variance with itself, and that it innowise substantially militates against the claims of theEnglishman, William Lee, who, we think, there can beno reason to doubt, was the actual and original inventor.

The great ingenuity displayed in the invention of thisexcellent machine has induced us to enter at consider-able length into its original discovery, which we conic*do with the greater propriety, as it seems to have under-gone but trifling alteration for nearly 170 years, whenthe first important improvement was made by JededianStrutt, who, in 1759, obtained his Patent for the Derbyribs. From this epoch the most extraordinary effortswere made to vary and add to the mechanism ofthe stock-ing frame, so as to adapt it to the production of fancywork and imitations of pillow lace. These were atfirst very imperfect, but led, in the course of the nexhalf century, to the invention of the point-net, pin-ne ,warp-net, and finally to the bobbin-net machines. Abou1776, Horton patented his knotted frame, and soonafter this the twilled and elastic machinery was inventeWe shall here consider the history of the stoc *'-”^frame as complete, and endeavour to give to the reathe best idea we can of its mechanism, availing oursein this respect of the descriptions by Mr. J- •~! incaand Mr. Farey ; and for the statistics of the trade ware indebted to an excellent article on the subjec yW. Felkin, Esq. The I)esC rip tion

(1047.) Description ofthe stocking frame. s t 0 f' benature of this machine, and its operation, will be stock 1 * 1 ?described by first referring to fig. 1, plate lxxvn., w * fra***®

represents a single thread formed into a number o or j^jj,

or waves by arranging it overa number of parallel nee ’ ^ j

as shewn at R, R; these are retained, or kept in theof loops or waves, by being drawn or looped t r °similar loops formed by the thread of the preceding cof the work S. The fabric thus formed by the unio>number of loops is easily unravelled, because the s aof the whole piece depends upon the ultimate asof the first end of the thread ; and if this is un on ' _

loops formed by that end will open and release ,

sequent loops one at a time till the whole is mi g

and drawn out into the single thread from whicmade. In the same way if the thread of a s °piece fails or breaks in any part, or a ’ ; 0 n

is called, it immediately produces a bole, the

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