The Spinning Jenny: The Industrial Revolution’s Breakthrough Invention

Who Invented the Spinning Jenny?

Designed by James Hargreaves in 1764 or 1765, the spinning jenny was one of the crucial inventions in the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution. It decreased production costs, encouraged the movement of textile production into factories, and eventually led to more advanced technologies, such as Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule.

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Background

The mechanization of spinning in Europe began when spinning wheels arrived from another continent in the High Middle Ages. Although the process was improved in the sixteenth century by the Saxon wheel and the flyer, the most significant changes to the craft were brought about by inventions in the eighteenth century, when every portion of the textile industry struggled to keep up with the demand for cotton.

Before the Middle Ages, Europeans used hand spinning to turn fiber into thread or yarn. The process involved using a stick to draw individual fibers out of a piece of wool. The spinner would then twist the fibers together into a single strand and wind them onto a spindle. Spinning wheels, the first step in mechanizing this process, have existed for centuries and perhaps millennia. They were likely invented in India and introduced to Europe in the High Middle Ages. Early spinning wheels had a horizontally mounted spindle and a large wheel. The spinner rotated a large wheel with his/her right hand while holding the piece of fiber in his/her left hand.

 At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europeans began using the Saxon wheel. The Saxon wheel wound the yarn onto a bobbin and included a stationary rod to hold the fiber. Instead of turning the wheel by hand, the spinner would operate it using a foot treadle. This meant both of the spinner’s hands were free. The sixteenth century also saw the invention of the flyer, a device that automatically twisted the yarn.

Perhaps because of its prevalence in daily life, spinning wheels frequently appear in stories and legends. In addition to the Bible, spinning wheels show up in the well-known story of “Sleeping Beauty,” first found in a French work; the Greek and Roman tale about Arachne, the talented spinner/weaver who boasts that she is more skillful than Athena (or Minerva); and the German fairytale “Rumpelstiltskin” in which a girl’s father claims she can spin straw into gold.

James Hargreaves 

James Hargreaves, a carpenter and weaver from Oswaldtwistle, England, is generally given credit for inventing the spinning jenny in the eighteenth century. He was a spinner himself with little education and little money, but a large family. For many years, the main cloth produced in Europe was wool. But in the early eighteenth century, cotton surged in popularity. Spinners struggled to keep up with the demand for cotton yarn. Hargreaves was attempting to make it easier to produce more yarn when he designed the spinning jenny.¹

There are some legends associated with the invention of the spinning jenny. For example, one story claims Hargreaves had the idea for his machine when his daughter knocked over a spinning wheel and he watched the spindle roll across the floor. Another story claims that he named the machine after either his wife or daughter. These are probably not true: the name “jenny” was actually from a slang word for “engine.” There is also some debate about the role of other people in the invention of the machine. Hargreaves may have simply improved on a design by Thomas High and made the concept more widespread.

The importance of the spinning jenny lay in its efficiency. Even with advances in design, spinning wheels only allowed workers to produce one spool of thread at a time. The spinning jenny was still hand-powered, but had multiple spindles. Therefore, spinners could use it to produce multiple spools at once. On the first spinning jenny, eight spindles collected thread from eight rovings. There was still only one wheel and belt, so the machine could be operated by a single person. Eventually, there would be spinning jennies that had over 100 spindles. The spinning jenny could not be used to produce all types of thread. Thread made using a jenny was both coarser and weaker than thread spun by hand. But the jenny still significantly decreased the cost of cloth production.

Role of the Spinning Jenny in the Industrial Revolution

The spinning jenny contributed to the growth of factories and the expansion of the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The Industrial Revolution generally refers to the period between 1760 and 1840 in England when technological changes revolutionized the nature of manufacturing and ultimately changed the way people worked and lived.

Some scholars consider the Industrial Revolution to be the beginning of the “machine age,” when machines became a key component of modern industry. In addition to the textile industry, machines were becoming more important in industries like iron, papermaking, and agriculture. As machines became more and more common, their demand created the new industry of building machines and selling them to manufacturers.

Before the spinning jenny, spinning and weaving were cottage industries, meaning that production typically took place in individual homes. Women, who were largely responsible for spinning, sometimes held “spinning bees” to see who could make the best yarn or the most yarn within a certain time frame. In the seventeenth century, spinning was often part of the “domestic system” or “putting-out system,” in which materials were given to rural producers who later returned the finished product.

Some of the early spinning jennies with only eight spindles could still be used in homes. But jennies with sixteen spindles had to be used in factories instead and some factories eventually used jennies with up to 120 spindles. The move of the textile industry to factories mirrored the rise of factories in other industries, such as metalworks.

The spinning jenny had far-reaching social and economic consequences. By enabling the mass production of yarn, it contributed to the growth of the textile industry, which became a key driver of Britain’s economy during the Industrial Revolution. However, this also meant the displacement of skilled handspinners, many of whom were women who had previously worked from home. The shift to factory labor disrupted traditional family structures and gender roles. Many textile workers, including children, now faced harsh working conditions and reduced control over their labor. In some cases, the introduction of the jenny and other machines led to protests and riots by workers who feared losing their livelihoods, such as the Luddite uprisings of the early 1800s.

The spinning jenny combined with other inventions within a brief time frame to alter the textile industry. Before the spinning jenny, the flying shuttle dramatically increased the speed of weaving cloth. Around the same time the spinning jenny was created, Richard Arkwright invented the water frame, a mechanical device powered by water wheels that was used to spin thread.²

But not everyone was pleased with the new technology. Some hand spinners feared that they would lose their livelihood as the spinning jenny became more popular. A group of them even broke into Hargreaves’s home and destroyed some of the jennies there. In response, Hargreaves moved to Nottinghamshire, England and opened a small mill with his business partner, Thomas James. The mill, which was reasonably successful, produced yarn to be sold to hosiers.

Hargreaves made a serious mistake by waiting too long to patent his invention. In 1770 he tried to obtain a patent on the 16-spindle jenny. He also threatened legal action against manufacturers who had copies of the spinning jenny, asking for a payment of £7,000. They initially responded by offering the much lower amount of £3,000 in exchange for dropping charges. But Hargreaves ultimately never saw a penny of the money because the courts rejected his patent on the grounds that he had already sold too many jennies.

 Spinning Jenny Impact

 The original spinning jenny remained popular until Samuel Crompton used the idea to create a new device in the late eighteenth century. After spending years supporting his family by producing yarn, Crompton became a violinist and reinvested his money trying to improve the spinning process. The fruit of his labor was the “spinning mule,” which combined Hargreaves’ spinning jenny with Arkwright’s water frame. The fact that it combined two inventions was the rationale behind the name “mule” because mules are produced by breeding a horse with a donkey. Crompton spent over five years designing and refining the machine, mostly working on it in the middle of the night and leading neighbors to think his house was haunted.

The spinning mule allowed spinners to make a large volume of high-quality thread with a fine gauge. This increased the selling price of thread while also increasing the amount of thread spinners produced. In fact, the mule could produce 300 times more yarn than a spinning wheel. But like Hargreaves, Crompton did not initially patent his spinning mule. Instead, Arkwright managed to get a patent on the creation. Crompton struggled to rectify the situation but was eventually awarded 5,000 pounds.³

With the spinning mule allowing such high yarn production, weavers were now struggling to keep up with turning all the thread into cotton cloth. Therefore, the next crucial invention in the textile industry was the power loom, created by Edmund Cartwright in 1787. Like other inventions during the Industrial Revolution, the power loom allowed producers (in this case, weavers) to save time and money while increasing production.

Conclusion

The collective advances in machinery for textile production revolutionized the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution. The production of cotton increased by 200 times between 1780 and 1850. In the nineteenth century, Britain produced a significant portion of the world’s cloth: more than one fifth in 1800 and more than half by 1850. Although the spinning jenny was ultimately replaced by more advanced technologies, such as the spinning mule, it played a consequential (and often controversial) role during the eighteenth century. Alongside other new machinery, it increased production to keep up with the new demand for cotton cloth and encouraged the movement of textile production from homes to factories.

Despite the challenges it posed for individual workers, the spinning jenny undeniably revolutionized textile production. The efficiency gains it generated, especially when combined with other key inventions like the flying shuttle and water frame, made British textiles more affordable and available than ever before. This not only reshaped consumer culture at home, with more people able to purchase fashionable cotton clothing, but also had global implications. Cheap and abundant British textiles flooded world markets, with profound consequences for colonialism and international trade. In this sense, the simple wooden spinning jenny can be seen as a pivotal invention that opened the door for Britain’s emergence as the world’s first industrial superpower.

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Bibliography:

 Bellis, Mary. “Inventor Samuel Crompton and His Spinning Mule: The 18th Century Innovation The Transformed the Textile Industry.” ThoughtCo. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/spinning-mule-samuel-crompton-1991498.

———. “James Hargreaves and the Invention of the Spinning Jenny.” ThoughtCo. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-the-spinning-jenny-4057900.

———. “Richard Arkwright’s Influence During the Industrial Revolution.” ThoughtCo. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/richard-arkwright-water-frame-1991693.

———. “Textile Industry and Machinery of the Industrial Revolution.” ThoughtCo. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/textile-machinery-industrial-revolution-4076291.

———. “The Spinning Wheel in History and Folklore: Technology for Spinning Yarn and Inspiration for Spinning Yarns.” ThoughtCo. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/spinning-wheel-evolution-1992414.

“Domestic System: Economics.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/topic/domestic-system.

“Flax Spinning Wheel.” In National Museum of American History. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1200991.

“Industrial Revolution.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution.

“James Hargreaves: English Inventor.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Hargreaves.

Levack, Brian, Edward Muir, and Meredith Veldman. “The Nature of the Industrial Revolution.” In The West: Encounters and Transformations, Combined Volume:652–59. Pearson, 2014.

“Spinning Wheel (Textiles).” In Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed March 9, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/technology/spinning-wheel.

Further Reading

Elvira, Andres. “Waltham-Lowell Textile System.” In Technical Innovation in American History: An Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, edited by Peg A. Lamphier and Rosanne Welch. Vol. 1, Colonial America to 1865. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2019.

“Improved Spinning Jenny.” In BBC: A History of the World. https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ZA1pL6NcT4ynMeLChiyaLg.

“The Spinning Jenny, 1770.” In British Library: Discover and Learn. https://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107855.html.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. Edited by Joel Mokyr. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Updated: March 14, 2024

1. Brian Levack, Edward Muir, and Meredith Veldman, “The Nature of the Industrial Revolution,” in The West: Encounters and Transformations, vol. Combined Volume (Pearson, 2014), 653.
2. Mary Bellis, “Textile Industry and Machinery of the Industrial Revolution,” ThoughtCo., accessed March 9, 2022, https://www.thoughtco.com/textile-machinery-industrial-revolution-4076291; Mary Bellis, “Richard Arkwright’s Influence During the Industrial Revolution,” ThoughtCo., accessed March 9, 2022, https://www.thoughtco.com/richard-arkwright-water-frame-1991693.
3. Bellis, “Inventor Samuel Crompton and His Spinning Mule: The 18th Century Innovation The Transformed the Textile Industry”; Levack, Muir, and Veldman, “The Nature of the Industrial Revolution,” 654.