Life sketch of james hargreaves

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Crompton said he invented it on his own. The name ‘jenny’ for his machine came from the words ‘engine’ and its shorter form ‘gin’.

Hargreaves could not read and write and worked as a domestic hand-loom weaver with his own spinning wheel and loom in his cottage. This innovation allowed for significantly more yarn production than traditional spinning methods.

James Hargreaves

English inventor
Country: Great Britain

Content:
  1. James Hargreaves: English Inventor and Pioneer of Spinning Machinery
  2. Biography
  3. The Invention of the Spinning Jenny
  4. Legal Battles and Later Years

James Hargreaves: English Inventor and Pioneer of Spinning Machinery

James Hargreaves was an English inventor and one of the three founders of mechanized spinning.

He gained Kay's trust and, it is said, convinced him to share the secrets of Highs's machines. Arkwright's patents were cancelled. He patented his design five years later in 1770. But his patents were actually cancelled.

Four years later, after his patents were temporarily restored, another court case happened in London in 1785. He also invented a machine for carding cotton.

Life and Early Inventions

Thomas Highs was born in Leigh, Lancashire, in 1718.

Seeing this peculiar system, Hargreaves realized that several spindles installed side by side could process multiple threads simultaneously. This problem was later solved with Arkwright's spinning frame. But Mr. Smith sadly drowned, and the plan fell through.

  • In 1777, Highs went to Nottingham to build spinning machines. He continued to work at his own spinning mill until his death.

    Arkwright’s methods soon dominated factory production of cotton but the spinning jenny continued to be used in domestic workshops to spin both cotton and wool for many decades.
     

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    As the spindles rotated, the rovings were pulled and twisted into yarn.

    When Thomas Highs died on December 13, 1803, at age 84, Drinkwater paid for his burial. In around 1764, Hargreaves built a wooden frame that could hold a spinning wheel working a row of spindles. Drinkwater gave him money every month and twice a year. These machines covered everything from cleaning cotton to spinning it into thread. In 1781, Arkwright went to court to protect his patents.

    However, another historian, Edward Baines, disagreed with Guest's claims in his own book, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, published in 1835.

    The Arkwright Patent Dispute

    In 1775, Richard Arkwright patented several machines for making cotton.

    life sketch of james hargreaves

    People argued that the inventions were not new, or that Arkwright had not invented them himself.

    Thomas Highs was a witness at the trial in February 1785. The spinning jenny stretched thread by holding it in a wooden clamp and pulling it.