THE MACHINERY OF THE EXHIBITION,

are so connected with the frame of the machine, that any or coarse, according
to the number of fibres of which the
fixed point is compelled, when in motion, to describe a circle thread is
composed.
round the axis; sliding pieces are compelled by fixed guides  The factories
in which raw silk is spun into silk-thread for
to describe straight lines, and so on. These pieces are con- weaving are
called throwing mills, ihe term throwing being
nected either by contact or by intermediate pieces, so that formed from the
word " throw," in the obsolete sense of " to
when'the first piece in the. series is moved-from any external twist,"
" to twine."
cause, it compels the second to move, which again gives motion  In 1719 a
silk-throwing mill was erected at Derby. This
to the third, and so on.                                    was the first
in England, and it still exists.
  The act of giving motion to a piece is termed driving it,  Winding is the
first process which the raw silk undergoes.
and that of receiving motion from a piece is termed following  Winding-that
is, transferring the silk skeins on to bobbins,
it. The follower receives motion from the driver.      was formerly done
by hand, on machines carrying four or six
  In the view we are about to take of the Manufacturing reals and as many
bobbins. The winding machines now are
Machines of the Exhibition, we exclude any reference to driven by power of
steam or water, and are arranged in frames
the receivers of power, important as is the part they play carrying' as many
as one hundred swifts or reels. The
in the history and economy of manufactures. Our object is winding requires
the unwearied attention of children to mend
specially to record mechanical processes, and to give some idea the threads
that break as well in this process as in the next.
of the mechanism'of the machines applied to textile manufac- There are about
eight thousand children under thirteen years
tures exhibited. We have chosen an order for treating of the of age employed
in British silk factories.
mechanical processes by which textile fabrics are produced,
which leads from the simple to the complex, and which shows
the origin of the improvements that led to the wonderfully
perfect machinery exhibited as applied to each and all textile
fabrics.
  These processes depend primarily on the nature of the
materials-the raw materials to be worked up. Silk, Cotton,
Flax, and Wool, require different methods of preparation for
being spun and woven, the ultimate processes in the union of            
            f_
all textile fibres.
  Silk Mlfanufactures.-It would be out of place to enter into E
any details in regard to the little worm which produces the
millions of pounds of raw silk annually produced and worked
up on the continent of Europe, in India and China, and
imported into Great Britain to supply this branch of industry.
  In the French, the Milanese, the Piedmontese, the Tuscan,
the Roman, Neapolitan, Algerian, Chinese, and Indian depart-
ments of the Exhibition, samples of the cocoons, and of the  Our drawing
represents the winding machine as made by
reeled or raw silk of these countries may be seen and exa- Mr. Frost of Macclesfield,
the skeins of raw silk are put on to
mined.                                                      the swifts which
are six-armed reels, with string cross bars
  The weight of cocoons varies according to the climate to form the fork
in which the skein lies. The axles of the
and management of the worms. About two hundred and swifts lie loosely in
centres, and the framing descends no
thirty to a pound may be taken as an average, and twelve lower than this
centre, so that there is very little liability to
pounds of cocoons make a pound of raw silk. Thus 2760 knocking.    The thread
is passed through   glass guides,
worms are required for every pound of raw silk! For every arranged on a traversing
guide bar, to the bobbins.
million pounds weight of raw silk produced in France, it is  The bobbins
are turned by double wooden rollers, turned
reckoned'that two hundred and fifty million pounds weight of out of one solid
piece of wood causing them to run with
mulberry leaves are consumed, and that five million of trees, greater truth
than ordinary rollers: and by their being
of the average age of thirty years, are stripped to furnish covered with
leather, the use of chalk or rosen, to get adhesion
them! . Upwards of five million pounds of raw silk are now  is unnecessary,
and thus a source of soiling the silk is avoided.
imported into Great Britain annually. In Britain the silk  By working with
double rollers as is done in the machine, it
factories are almost confined to England.              is impossible that
the cheeks and spindles of the bobbins can
  The process of Reeling the Silk from the Cocoons is carried wear out.
on in Europe in the months of July, August, and September,  The motion of
the guide bar is produced by oval toothed
in establishments called Statures, and in the cottages of the wheels. The
object of this motion is to cross the threads
peasantry of the countries where the silk is produced. diagonally on the
bobbins in order to prevent the threads from
The cocoons become an 'article of trade as soon as the sticking together,
that is to ensure that the unwinding them
insect inside has been killed by exposing them in an oven, shall take the
least possible force, and proceed without
or' to the steam of boiling water: they are now to be wound entangling. The
drawing No. 1 represents only a small part
of, or reeled. - In the commencement the he operation, the of the length
of a winding machine.
cocoons, having been for a short time in a trough of hot water
to soften their gum, the loosened ends are then taken (four
together generally), twisted with the fingers, then passed
through an eye on the end of a wire, and thence to the reel.
Two skeins are generally thus formed at the same time, a child
turning the reel, and a woman attending to mend the threads
or fibres. The reel is so constituted, that while revolving it
has communicated to it by wheel-work, a lateral traverse from
right to left, and from left to right. The amount of traverse  Cleaning.-The
silk having been transferred from the-skeins
for each revolution being. regulated so that the thread of one to tle bobbins
has to undergo a process of cleansing. This
revolution does not overlay the other, for if it did, the natural process
is performed in transfering the silk from th  is
-gumminess would cause these threads to adhere. The extent produced on the
last machine, to the bobbins or trais in the
of traverse is about three inches, and in the time employed in machine represented
in the accompanying drawing.
reeling this breadth of threads, the gum dries sufficiently to  The silk
has to be cleaned to rid it of adhesive gummy
prevent the threads from sticking to each other at the points matter and
dust. For this it is passed though  a  r
  of crsinsng.                                              knife or double
knife placed on the guide rail, by the motion
  All kinds of silk which are simply drawn from the cocoons of which the
thread is uniformly distributed on the new
by the reeling, are called raw silk, but are denominatedfine bobbins. If
by any accident a thread be left out of the knife,


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