John Kay (spinning frame)

He is sometimes confused with the unrelated John Kay from Bury, Lancashire, who had invented the flying shuttle, a weaving machine, some thirty years earlier.

A neighbour of his, Thomas Highs, was an inventor, and the two collaborated in investigations of machinery for the manufacture of textiles, including the spinning of thread by means of rollers.

[6] The character of this relationship, and in particular, the competing claims of Arkwright, Kay, and also Highs to primacy as inventors, were subsequently to become the subjects of bitter legal dispute (see below).

[11] To deflect attention, Arkwright told outsiders that he and Kay were developing a longitude machine;[12] even so, the secrecy and the noises coming from their workshop led to accusations of witchcraft.

[13] Arkwright and Kay subsequently moved to Nottingham, where in 1769 they constructed a spinning machine embodying the ideas which they had been developing.

The new machine, called a "water frame", would revolutionize the textile manufacturing industry and enrich Arkwright and his partners – but not Kay.