Cartwright Invents the Power Loom

1784

A Leicestershire parson named Edmund Cartwright, who had never seen a weaver work, designed a loom driven by a steam engine. His first prototype barely functioned. But within twenty years his invention would turn handloom weaving into a starving trade and put the rhythm of the shuttle into iron. The power loom completed the mechanization of textiles that Arkwright's water frame and Hargreaves's spinning jenny had begun.