It started with a day in 1764. James hargreaves, a weaver in Lancashire, England, came home that night. When he opened the door, he accidentally kicked over the spinning machine his wife was using. His first reaction at that time was to straighten the spinning machine quickly. But when he bent down, he suddenly froze. It turned out that he saw that the spinning machine that had been kicked down was still turning, but the spindle that had been horizontal had become upright. It suddenly occurred to him that if several spindles were arranged vertically and driven by a spinning wheel, wouldn't it be possible to spin more yarns at once? Hargreaves was so excited that he immediately tried to do it. The next day, he built a new spinning machine with one spinning wheel driving eight vertical spindles, and the efficiency was improved eight times at once. In 1764, he made a spinning machine named after his daughter Jenny. This is the earliest multi-spindle manual spinning machine, which is equipped with eight spindles and fed with fiber strips by rollers. It is suitable for spinning cotton, wool and hemp fibers. The appearance of Jenny's spinning machine caused a panic among a large number of manual spinners at that time. They rushed into Hargreaves' home and destroyed the machine. In 1768, J. Hargreaves set up a spinning workshop in Nottingham with others as a joint venture to produce knitting yarn with Jenny spinning machine. As he failed to apply for a patent in those years, he had to make money by making his own Jenny machine. "Jenny Machine" is not only efficient, but also the yarn quality is better, so Hargreaves' business is good, and "Jenny Machine" is gradually spreading.
This evening, after dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Hargreaves are talking about the growing affluence that Jenny Machine has brought them. Suddenly a flurry of footsteps appeared at his door, and then the door was violently knocked down and a group of angry men and women rushed in. They couldn't help saying that they destroyed all the "Jenny machines" made in the room: "Go to hell with the harmful machines you made!" Someone even set fire to Hargreaves' house. The couple were kicked out of a small town in Lancashire.
It turns out that after the British Industrial Revolution, a large number of peasants who lost their land flooded into cities to work for factory owners to make a living. At that time, Britain occupied India as a colony, and the cotton textiles produced in India were cheap and good, and they sold well for a while, which triggered the prosperity of the British cotton spinning industry. However, the productivity of weaving machinery has been greatly improved because of the invention of shuttle technology by mechanical worker Kay. The cotton yarn needed for weaving is still slowly spun by the spinning wheels of many household handicrafts. Therefore, cotton yarn is in short supply and the purchase price is higher. The invention of "Jenny Machine" increased the output of cotton yarn, so the price of cotton yarn purchased by weaving mills fell. Those spinning workers who don't use Jenny machine not only have low output, but also can't sell cotton yarn at a good price. After a long time, their anger broke out, and the scene of destroying the machine happened.
Mr. and Mrs. Hargreaves had to live on the streets of Nottingham, but they still tried to improve the Jenny machine.
in p>1768, Hargreaves obtained a patent; By 1784, "Jenny Machine" had increased to eighty spindles. Four years later, there are 2, Jenny machines in Britain.