Full name: James Hargreaves Born: c.1720 Invention/Achievement: The Spinning Jenny Date of introduction/Achievement: 1964 Died: 22nd April 1778

The invention of the Spinning Jenny can be seen as an important early step in Britain's industrial revolution.  It brought the benefits of mechanisation to what was essentially a cottage industry.  The Spinning Jenny was the brain child of James Hargreaves, a weaver and carpenter.  

Born at Knuzden Brook, near Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, Hargreaves lived in Blackburn, then a town of some 5,000 people, with his wife and thirteen children.  Blackburn was well known for the production of "Blackburn Greys" cloth, made of linen warp and cotton weft.  The cotton weft was produced by hand on individual one-thread spinning wheels and demand often outstripped supply.  

Hargreaves is said to have got the idea for the Spinning Jenny when a spinning wheel was knocked over at his house.  He saw that both wheel and spindle continued spinning and that multiple spindles could be mounted side by side, spinning several threads simultaneously with a single operator.  Hargreaves constructed a metal frame with eight wooden spindles at one end, with a set of eight rovings' (bundles of fibre) attached to a beam.  The strands of the rovings' were extended by horizontal bars, moved by the spinner's left hand, while his right hand turned a wheel causing all eight spindles to revolve and take up the thread.

Hargreaves produced the Spinning Jenny for his own use and later sold a few to friends.  Problems arose when the price of yarn fell, threatening to put the spinning community out of work.  One night, a group of spinners broke into Hargreaves' house and destroyed his Spinning Jennies.  Alarmed, Hargreaves moved away to Nottingham, where he supplied yarn to the manufacturers of cotton hosiery.  

On 12^th June 1770 he was granted a patent on his Spinning Jenny.  With his partner, Thomas James, Hargreaves set up a small mill at Hockley, which operated fairly successfully until his death in 1778.  Until the 1960s, it was thought that Hargreaves had named the Spinning Jenny after his wife or one of his daughters.  In fact neither wife nor any of his daughters were called Jenny.