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In 1777, two workmen, Frost and Holmes, were both engaged in making point-net by means of the modifications they had introduced in the stocking-frame; and in the course of about thirty years, so rapid was the growth of this branch of production that 1500 point-net frames were at work, giving employment to upwards of 15,000 people.
The stocking-frame had already, in a modified form, been applied to the manufacture of point-net lace, in which the mesh was LOOPED as in a stocking, but the work was slight and frail, and therefore unsatisfactory.
With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the character of young Benjamin Franklin.
Strutt and Need, the former of whom was the ingenious inventor and patentee of the stocking-frame. Mr. Strutt at once appreciated the merits of the invention, and a partnership was entered into with Arkwright, whose road to fortune was now clear.
One of the most important modifications in the Stocking-Frame was that which enabled it to be applied to the manufacture of lace on a large scale.
Lee was no more successful in finding other patrons, and considering himself and his invention treated with contempt, he embraced the offer made to him by Sully, the sagacious minister of Henry IV., to proceed to Rouen and instruct the operatives of that town then one of the most important manufacturing centres of France in the construction and use of the stocking-frame.
The boy soon learnt to handle tools with dexterity, and he acquired a minute knowledge of the parts of which the stocking-frame was composed, as well as of the more intricate warp-machine. At his leisure he studied how to introduce improvements in them, and his friend, Mr.
He accordingly obtained a stocking-frame, and after mastering its construction and mode of action, he proceeded to introduce new combinations, by means of which he succeeded in effecting a variation in the plain looped-work of the frame, and was thereby enabled to turn out "ribbed" hosiery.
The other modes of making fabrics shown are a machine for making fishing-nets of great width, and a number of knitting-machines, from the stocking-frame of eighty years ago to the small domestic machine, and the larger one with nine hundred needles in the circumference and making a circular seamless fabric eighteen inches in diameter.
And then these foolish lovers kissed each other, as William Lee and his wife may have embraced after the penniless young student had perfected his invention of the stocking-frame. "Forty pounds!" exclaimed Miss Halliday, "all won by your pen, and your poor fingers, and your poor, poor head! How it must ache after a long day's work! How clever you must be, Valentine!" "Yes, dear; amazingly clever.
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