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The spinning jenny is a multi-spindle spinning frame, and was one of the key developments in the industrialisation of textile manufacturing during the early Industrial Revolution. It was invented in 1764–1765 by James Hargreaves in Stan Hill, Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire in England.
The device reduced the amount of work needed to produce cloth, with a worker able to work eight or more spools at once. This grew to 120 as technology advanced. The yarn produced by the jenny was not very strong until Richard Arkwright invented the water frame. The spinning jenny helped to start the factory system of cotton manufacturing.
At the time, cotton yarn production could not keep up with demand of the textile industry, and Hargreaves spent some time considering how to improve the process. The flying shuttle (John Kay 1733) had increased yarn demand by the weavers by doubling their productivity, and now the spinning jenny could supply that demand by increasing the spinners' productivity even more. The machine produced coarse thread.
The use of coloured cotton weft, with linen warp was permitted in the 1736 Manchester Act. There now was an artificial demand for woven cloth. In 1764, of cotton-wool was imported.
Before 1720, the handloom weaver spent part of each day visiting neighbours buying any weft they had. Carding and spinning might be the only income for that household, or part of it. The family might farm a few acres and card, spin and weave wool and cotton. It took three carders to provide the roving for one spinner, and up to three spinners to provide the yarn for one weaver. The process was continuous, and done by both sexes, from the youngest to the oldest. The weaver would go once a week to the market with his wares and offer them for sale.
A change came about 1740 when fustian masters gave out raw cotton and warps to the weavers and returned to collect the finished cloth (Putting-out system). The weaver organised the carding, spinning and weaving to the master's specification. The master then dyed or printed the grey cloth, and took it to shopkeepers. Ten years later this had changed and the fustian masters were middle men, who collected the grey cloth and took it to market in Manchester where it was sold to merchants who organised the finishing.
To hand weave a piece of eighteenpenny weft took 14 days and paid 36 shillings in all. Of this nine shillings was paid for spinning, and nine for carding. So by 1750, a rudimentary manufacturing system feeding into a marketing system emerged.
In 1738, John Kay started to improve the loom. He improved the reed, and invented the raceboard, the shuttleboxes and the picker which together allowed one weaver to double his output. This invention is commonly called the flying shuttle. It met with violent opposition and he fled from Lancashire to Leeds. Though the workers thought this was a threat to their jobs, it was adopted and the pressure was on to speed up carding and spinning.
The shortage of spinning capacity to feed the more efficient looms provided the motivation to develop more productive spinning techniques such as the spinning jenny, and triggered the start of the Industrial Revolution.
By this time a number of spinners in Lancashire were using copies of the machine, and Hargreaves sent notice that he was taking legal action against them. The manufacturers met, and offered Hargreaves £3,000. He at first demanded £7,000, and stood out for £4,000, but the case eventually fell apart when it was learned he had sold several in the past.
The spinning jenny succeeded because it held more than one ball of yarn, making more yarn in a shorter time and reducing the overall cost. The spinning jenny would not have been such a success if the flying shuttle had not been invented and installed in textile factories. Its success was limited in that it required the rovings to be prepared on a wheel, and this was limited by the need to card by hand. It continued in common use in the cotton and fustian industry until about 1810. and could produce both weft and warp for the woollen industry. The spinning jenny was superseded by the spinning mule. The jenny was adapted for the process of slubbing, being the basis of the Slubbing Billy.
The name is variously said to derive from this tale. The Registers of Church Kirk show that Hargreaves had several daughters, but none named Jenny (neither was his wife). A more likely explanation of the name is that jenny was an abbreviation of engine.
Thomas Highs of Leigh has claimed to be the inventor and the story is repeated using his wife's name.
Another myth has Thomas Earnshaw inventing a spinning device of a similar description – but destroying it after fearing he might be taking bread out of the mouths of the poor.
Success
Hargreaves kept the machine secret for some time, but produced a number for his own growing industry. The price of yarn fell, angering the large spinning community in Blackburn. Eventually they broke into his house and smashed his machines, forcing him to flee to Nottingham in 1768. This was a centre for the hosiery industry, and knitted silks, cottons and wool. There he set up shop producing jennies in secret for one Mr Shipley, with the assistance of a joiner named Thomas James. He and James set up a textile business in Mill Street. On 12 July 1770, he took out a patent (no. 962) on his invention, the Spinning Jenny—a machine for spinning, drawing and twisting cotton.
Origin and myth
The most common story told about the invention of the device and the origin of the jenny in the machine's name is that one of his daughters (or his wife) named Jenny knocked over one of their own spinning wheels. The device kept working normally, with the spindle now pointed upright. Hargreaves realised there was no particular reason the spindles had to be horizontal, as they always had been, and he could place them vertically in a row.Bellis, Mary: «Spinning Jenny – James Hargreaves», About.com
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