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NAME: James Hargreaves.

BORN: Stanhill, Oswald-twistle, Lancashire, 1720.

CLAIM TO FAME: Reputed to have invented the Spinning Jenny, the first practical spinning machine, although strong claims have been made on behalf of others, including Thomas Highs.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: A weaver by trade, Hargreaves - the father of 13 children - built his first Jenny probably in 1766, and possibly with the assistance of Blackburn manufacturer Robert Peel.

Using little more than a pocket knife, Hargreaves gave his first, crude, wooden machine eight spindles allowing him to produce eight times as much thread as a common handwheel spinner.

He was in the process of building a batch of 20 Jennies for Peel when Blackburn

workers, worried about their livelihoods, rioted and marched on the barn where he was working, destroying everything they found.

Hargreaves fled to Nottingham, where he went into business building and operating his machines. He patented the Jenny belatedly in 1770, but by that time the machine was in widespread use throughout the cotton districts, being so simple that any reasonable handyman could build it.

The Spinning Jenny was crude and produced thread that was too soft and weak to be used for the warp threads in a loom.

It was a half-way house between the farmhouse-kitchen spinning wheel and the factory machines like the Water Frame and the Spinning Mule. But it could be operated
by a child and it furthered the progress of the Industrial Revolution by easing a worrying production bottleneck that was causing major problems for handloom weavers.

At least one Jenny was still in operation in the early years of the 20th century.

Contrary to legend, Hargreaves did not die penniless. When he passed away in Nottingham in 1777, he left an estate worth about £4,000.

PLACES TO VISIT: Helmshore Mill Museum at Haslingden, Lancashire, which has a working reproduction Jenny on display.

EXTERNAL LINKS: Spartacus, Wikipedia.

SEE ALSO: John Kay, Richard Arkwright, Thomas Highs, Samuel Crompton..