or **SPINET** (Ital., *Spinetta*), an old-fashioned musical instrument, of which the brass and steel wires were struck by quills fixed to the tongues of the jacks that were moved by finger-keys. It was the predecessor of the harpsichord and the piano-forte.

**SPINNING** is the art of forming continuous threads by drawing out and twisting together filamentous materials. This was at first a manual art, and was practised in the earliest ages. The simple tool first made use of consisted of a piece of wood, with its lower extremity of a conical form like a boy's top, and its upper portion long and tapering to a point, to which the fibres to be spun were fixed; this was termed a spindle, and in using was spun like a top to twist the threads. To the spindle an addition was soon made of the distaff, consisting of a piece of wood, round which the material to be spun was lapped. The distaff was held in the one hand of the spinner, while the other hand was engaged in drawing the fibres from the mass, and ever and anon giving fresh impetus to the motion of the spindle. This simple apparatus must have been early used, as among the sculptures of the early Egyptian tombs we find representations of females forming threads with the spindle; and singular though it be, the same apparatus may yet be found in a few places in Scotland, affording, in its toilsome progress, a striking contrast to the whirling wonders of the cotton-mill.

A great improvement in the use of the distaff and spindle, by which the spinner's hands were in a great measure left free to regulate the formation of the thread, was made by mounting the spindle in a frame, and using a larger wheel to drive it by a belt; and this again was further improved by using a treadle to effect the movement of the wheel by the foot of the spinner. No attempt, however, to introduce mechanism to supply the place of the skill and dexterity in manipulation, which the spinner could acquire only by assiduous practice, appears to have been made before the beginning of the eighteenth century. At that time there were in common use two kinds of spinning implements. The one, called the large wheel, was used in the spinning of wool and cotton, consisting of a large wheel or rim mounted in a frame, and having a belt to drive the spindle which projected from the side of the frame, and had the material to be spun affixed to its end. In spinning, the operator, usually a female, laid hold of the wool or cotton with the finger and thumb of her left hand, at a few inches distant from the spindle; and right hand; she thus extended and twisted repeated portions, and as they were twisted, she, by guiding with her hand the thread she had formed, allowed it to be wound upon the spindle. Thus, from the carded cotton or wool, a loose flabby thread or rove was formed, which was again subjected to a similar drawing or extension, and twisted until reduced to a fine and compact thread. The other implement, called the small or Saxon wheel, was a more perfect apparatus, and was used for the spinning of flax; it had on its spindle a bobbin, on which the thread was wound, and a flyer revolving with greater rapidity than the bobbin, to give the thread twist; a fixed distaff, on which the prepared flax was loosely rolled; and a treadle by which a rotary motion was given to the wheel by the foot of the operator, whose hands were thus left at liberty to draw out the fibres of the flax in the requisite number to form the thread; in doing this, the fibres were, from time to time, moistened with saliva, to make them more readily combine.

Such were the spinning implements used in Britain and elsewhere, fit companions for the rude looms by which their produce was woven into cloth. But improvements had begun to be made in the apparatus for weaving. The shuttle, which had to be thrown by both hands alternately, and in cloths above thirty-six inches wide, by two men, one at each side, was in 1733 superseded by the fly-shuttle, the invention of John Kay of Bury in Lancashire. By this improvement, the weaver could throw the shuttle from side to side with his right hand; one man could weave the widest fabrics, and could produce nearly twice as much work as by the old method. The spinners could not now supply weft for the weavers, and hence arose the necessity for some machine that would increase the production of yarn.

In 1739, Lewis Paul, the son of Dr Paul, and who had been left in the guardianship of Lord Shaftesbury and his brother, appears to have been the first who made an attempt to substitute mechanism for the hands and skill of the spinner. To him is due the honour of discovering the principle of roller-spinning, a principle, forty years afterwards, fully developed by the genius of Arkwright. In that year Paul obtained a patent for a machine "for the spinning of wool and cotton in a manner entirely new." Paul had originally some little property acquired by marriage, but while working at his invention he appears to have fallen into poverty, to have become involved in debt, and to have shirked about under assumed names, to avoid his creditors. He had gone to Birmingham to avail himself of the better skill of the workmen there in the construction of his machine, and had borrowed money from Mr Warren, a bookseller, and Mr Wyatt, one of those who worked at the construction of the machine. He was unable to repay this money, but Warren accepted as payment of his L100, a license to erect fifty spindles; and Wyatt agreed to take the machine which he had helped to set up in payment of his claim of L800. On his return to London, Paul sold several machines. He confined his attention chiefly, however, to the sale of his licences, in which he was so successful that he was soon enabled to pay off his debts. He lived in comfortable circumstances to the time of his death in 1759.

Although Wyatt does not appear to have set up any claim to the invention of the machine which thus fell into his hands, yet in the following account by his son, Mr Charles Wyatt, the whole merit of the invention is claimed for him.

"In the year 1730, or thereabouts, living then at a village near Litchfield, our respected father first conceived the project, and carried it into effect; and in the year 1733, by a model of about two feet square, in a small building near Sutton Coldfield, without a single witness to the performance, was spun the first thread of cotton ever produced without the intervention of the human fingers, he, the inventor, to use his own words, 'being all the time in a pleasing, but trembling, suspense.' The wool had been carded in the common way, and was passed between two cylinders, from whence the bobbin drew it by means of the twist."

This successful experiment induced him to seek for a pecuniary connexion equal to the views that the project excited, and one appeared to present itself with a Mr Lewis Paul, which terminated unhappily for the projector; for Paul, a foreigner, poor and enterprising, made offers and bargains which he never fulfilled, and contrived, in the year 1738, to have a patent taken out in his own name for some additional apparatus, a copy of which I send you; and in 1741, or 1742, a mill turned by two asses walking round an axis was erected in Birmingham, and ten girls were employed in attending the work. Two hanks of the cotton then and there spun are now in my possession, accompanied with the inventor's testimony of the performance. Drawings of the machinery were sent, or appear to have been sent, to Mr Cave, for insertion in the Gentleman's Magazine.

This establishment, unsupported by sufficient property, languished a short time, and then expired; the supplies were exhausted, and the inventor much injured by the experiment, but his confidence in the scheme was unimpaired. The machinery was sold in 1743. A work upon a larger scale, on a stream of water, was established at Northampton, under the direction of Mr Yeoman, but with the property of Mr Cave. The work contained 250 spindles, and employed fifty pair of hands.

The work at Northampton did not prosper. It passed, I believe, into the possession of a Mr Yeo, a gentleman of the law, in London, about the year 1764; and, from a strange coincidence of circumstances, there is the highest probability that the machinery got into the hands of a person who, with the assistance of others, knowing how to apply it with skill and judgment, and to supply what might be deficient, raised upon it, by a gradual accession of profit, an immense establishment, and a princely fortune."

Mr Robert Cole, F.S.A., is in possession of documents which, notwithstanding this circumstantial account, clearly prove Paul's title to be considered sole inventor of roller-spinning. The principles of his invention are contained in the following extract from the specification of his patent:

"The wool or cotton being thus prepared (by carding into slivers), one end of the mass, rope, thread, or sliver, is put betwixt a pair of rowlers, cillinders, or cones, or some such movements, which being twined round by their motion, draws in the raw mass of wool or cotton to be spun in proportion to the velocity given so such rowlers, cillinders, or cones. As the prepared mass passes regularly through or betwixt these rowlers, cillinders, or cones, a succession of other rowlers, cillinders, or cones, moving proportionally faster than the first, draw the rope, thread, or sliver, into any degree of fineness which may be required. Sometimes these successive rowlers, cillinders, or cones (but not the first) have another rotation besides that which diminishes the thread, yarn, or worsted, viz., that they give it a small degree of twist betwixt each pair, by means of the thread itself passing through the axis and centre of that rotation. In some other cases only the first pair of rowlers, cillinders, or cones, are used, and then the bobbins, spole, or quill, upon which the thread, yarn, or worsted is spun, is so contrived as to draw faster than the first rowlers, cillinders, or cones give, and in such proportion as the first mass, rope, or sliver is proposed to be diminished."

To appreciate rightly Paul's invention, we must take into consideration the state of the art at his day. No machine, except the household wheels, already described, then existed, and their useful effect depended on the skill and dexterity of the spinner. Paul's invention contained the germ of a self-acting and self-regulating principle; and the means which he used were so unlike any operation perform-