Richard Arkwright invents the spinning frame, which…

Richard Arkwright invents the spinning frame, which he patents on July 3, 1769.

Later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power, it is a machine that produces a strong twist for warps, substituting metal cylinders for human fingers.

This makes possible inexpensive yarns to manufacture cheap calicoes, on which the subsequent great expansion of the cotton industry will be based.

Arkwright and John Smalley set up a small horse-driven factory at the textile center of Nottingham.

A self-made man, Arkwright is to be a leading entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution.

Arkwright's achievement is to combine power, machinery, semiskilled labor, and a new raw material (cotton) to create, more than a century before Ford, mass production.

His mechanical abilities and, above all, his genius for organization make him, more than anyone else, the creator of the modern factory system.