Power loom

[1] It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by the Howard and Bullough company made the operation completely automatic.

The main components of the loom are the warp beam, heddles, harnesses, shuttle, reed, and takeup roll.

Weavers are expected to uphold high industry standards and are tasked with monitoring anywhere from ten to as many as thirty separate looms at any one time.

Should broken picks be detected, the weaver will disable the machine and undertake to correct the error, typically by replacing the bobbin of filler thread in as little time as possible.

There now appear a series of useful improvements that are contained in patents for useless devices At this point the loom has become automatic except for refilling weft pirns.

The fustian trade gave the towns a skilled workforce that was used to the complicated Dutch looms, and was perhaps accustomed to industrial discipline.

The business was dominated by a few families, who had the capital needed to invest in new mills and to buy hundreds of looms.

Sulzer Brothers, a Swiss company had the exclusive rights to shuttleless looms in 1942, and licensed the American production to Warner & Swasey.

Today, advances in technology have produced a variety of looms designed to maximise production for specific types of material.

For example, in 1816 two thousand rioting Calton weavers tried to destroy power loom mills and stoned the workers.

[9] In the longer term, by making cloth more affordable the power loom increased demand and stimulated exports, causing a growth in industrial employment, albeit low-paid.

[12] There are a number of inherent dangers in the machines, to which inattentive or poorly trained weavers can fall victim.

In addition, there is a risk of the shuttle flying out of the loom at a high-speed (200+ mph/322 kmh) and striking a worker if the moving reed encounters a thread/yarn or other mechanical jam/error.

A Northrop loom manufactured by Draper Corporation in the textile museum, Lowell, Massachusetts
Shuttle with pirn
Shuttle loom operations: shedding, picking and battening
A loom from the 1890s with a dobby head. Illustration from the Textile Mercury.