The Success of Automation

INVENTOR
Richard Roberts, 1789 - 1864

LOCATION OF MACHINE
Nederlandse Textielmuseum, Tilburg, Netherlands

PATENT APPLICATION
Self Actor 1830

The Crompton Mule was improved by many people, so that around 1790 the carriage had 150 spindles. Strong workers were needed to operate the mule by hand. It required great skill to wind on the yarn evenly with the correct tension. The problem was not only in pushing the carriage at the right speed to compensate for the varying diameters on the cop chase, but also the fact that as the cop build up the length of yarn wound around the spindle became progressively shorter.

In 1790 William Kelly succeeded in converting the spinning phase on the mule to a power drive, though winding on was still done by hand. One worker could thus look after two mules with up to 400 spindles. While one mule was drafting and spinning, he pushed the carriage of the other inwards, thus winding on the yarns.

Richard Roberts succeeded in making the mule "self-acting". He solved the problem of winding on with the quadrant mechanism which regulated the spindle speed during cop build up. He also created the eccentric shaft through which the belt drive change over and the clutches were activated, as well as the counter faller wire, which regulated the yarn tension during winding on. The self-acting mule could spin the finest and coarsest, hard or soft twisted yarns from either short or long fibres. The machines had up to 1200 spindles and were up to 37 meters long.

The self acting mule was the foundation of prosperity of the textile industry in Lancashire because it produced better yarn than other machines. England therefore banned the export of these machines. Although machines were too slow for modern production demands, because of the two phase systems spinning, they kept their place in the textile industry until about 1950.