Thomas Highs

Thomas Highs (1718–1803), of Leigh, Lancashire, was a reed-maker[1][2] and manufacturer of cotton carding and spinning engines in the 1780s, during the Industrial Revolution.

Five years after his marriage, he became interested in cotton-spinning machinery and between 1763 and 1764, he worked to produce a spinning engine with John Kay, a clockmaker,[4] who was a close neighbour of his at the time.

[5] Richard Guest, claimed that Thomas Highs was the actual inventor of both Hargreaves' spinning jenny, and Arkwright's rollers, the feature of the water frame.

Guest then self-published a 233-page book, 'The British Cotton Manufactures: and a Reply to an Article on the Spinning Contained in a Recent Number of the Edinburgh Review' that accused Baines and McCullough of plagiarism and asserted that Highs was indeed the inventor of both these items.

In 1775 Arkwright patented a variety of machinery that performed all the processes of manufacture, from cleaning to carding to final spinning.

Whereas the jenny had stretched the thread by trapping it in a clove, a sort of wooden vice and pulling it out, the water frame achieved better results by passing the roving through two sets of gripping rollers.

It is alleged that Highs gave clockmaker Kay a wooden model of his rollers and asked him to make a working metal version.

Richard Arkwright met Kay on his business travels, gained his confidence, and over a drink in a public house persuaded him to hand over the secrets of Highs's machines.