Northrop Loom

[citation needed] James Henry Northrop, (8 May 1856 - 12 December 1940) was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, where he worked in the textile industry.

Other members of the Draper organization had developed a workable warp stop motion which was also included.

When the shuttle ran out of thread, Northrop's mechanism ejected the depleted pirn and loaded a new full one without stopping.

Mill owners had to decide whether the labour saving was worth the capital investment in a new loom.

By 1900, Draper had sold over 60,000 Northrop looms and were shipping 1,500 a month, were employing 2,500 men and enlarging their Hopedale works to increase that output.

Henry Philip Greg imported some of the first Northrops into Britain in 1902, for his Albert Mill in Reddish, and encouraged his brother Robert Alexander Greg to introduce Northrops into Quarry Bank Mill in 1909.

Continuous fibre machines, say for rayon, which was more break-prone, needed a specialist loom.

Because of their mass production techniques they were reluctant and slow to retool for new technologies such as shuttleless looms.