History of Wm. Cotton
1589
The first knitting machine, the hand frame, was invented in 1589 by the Rev. William Lee of Calverton, Notts.
The bearded needle was the key to this; it enabled a row of loops to be formed as quickly as a single loop could be knitted by hand.
Constant improvements led to the growth of an industry in London by 1600 producing fashion stockings, hence the term 'stocking frame'. Knitting took place initially in the home and later in specially built frame shops. The East Midlands became a centre for the industry as Guild restrictions became too great in London. Better communication and the availability od suitable yarns were factors influencing migration. Knitters served a seven-year apprenticeship, working under a hosier's control.
The Hosiery factory
The manufacture of knitted goods was the last branch of the textile industry to adapt to mechanical power. Yarn spinning had been done by water power from the 1770s and by steam power from the earliest years of the nineteenth century but as the widespread use of steam-driven knitting frames did not develop until the later years of the nineteenth century, the industry never passed through a water powered phase.
Experiments with power-driven knitting frames were numerous during the nineteenth century. Marc Isambard Brunel was granted a patent in 1816 for a steam-powered circular machine, but the problems of the industry at this period presumably prevented its adoption. The idea of a circular machine was taken up again in the late 1830s since it could operate faster than a flat machine which involved a series of discontinuous movements.
More circular machines were adopted after Matthew Townshend invented the latch needle in 1847. On this type of needle the barb was operated by the yarn itself as the loops passed over it in a similar manner to a modern rug hook. The presser bar to close the needle beards was no longer necessary and so circular machines using latch needles were simpler to operate. Power-driven hosiery factories were opened in the middle decades of the nineteenth century but the machines could knit only circular fabric which was not shaped in any way and so it was used for cut-ups. Fashioned articles were still made on the hand frame and so inventors concentrated on the problem of widening and narrowing fabric automatically. Arthur Paget of Loughborough and Luke Barton of Hyson Green, Nottingham, both solved the problem of narrowing fabric in the same year, 1857, Paget producing a one-off machine and Barton a wide frame producing several lengths at once.
Another Loughborough manufacturer, William Cotton, first solved the widening problem and then in 1864 received a patent for automatic narrowing and widening using a fine-gauge frame. His machine still made use of Lee's spring bearded needles, but they were placed vertically in the frame and the sinkers horizontally, with the bar to which the sinkers were attached acting as a presser to close the needle beards. The apparatus for transferring loops to narrow and widen fabric hung above the row of needles and could be adjusted at the turn of a screw. Cotton's machine was soon widely adopted in the hosiery trade and he established a separate factory which was producing a hundred machines a year by the late 1870s.
William Cotton invented the basic knitting machine movements used in modern equipment. He moved to this factory in Pinfold Gate, Loughborough, in the 1880s. The different buildings are identified in the engraving and include a forge, needle and sinker departments and several erecting shops.