What is a story?
Sir Richard Arkwright, a hair stylist and barber was also an inventor.
"One thinks of that other hairdresser. Richard Arkwright, whose eighteenth-century water frame was a key invention in the shift from hand to power spinning in the transformation of the textile industry."
Pursell, p. 45.
Richard Arkwright, the hairdresser turned manufacturing entrepreneur and later
knighted for his alteration of the textile industry in Derbyshire in the late
1760s.
Application of analytical thinking to spinning and weaving of yarn:
“The aim in analyzing these actions was not to make the operator more efficient but to replace her by a machine.”
“It was recognized by Lewis Paul around 1738 that one or two pairs of rollers could be used to feed the sliver into the machine the same way as the spinner used her fingers. Then various ways of mechanizing the movements of the spinners’ arms were tried, culminating in the invention of two separate but equally successful machines by Arkwright and Hargreaves in the 1760s.”
p. 99
“Arkwright’s ‘water frame’, patented in 1769.” adaptations
p. 104
“On Richard Arkwright’s later and more effective machines there were three pairs of rollers, which drew out the partially spun yarn a little before the rotation of the flyer gave it the final twist.”
“failure of work discipline and organization…”
“Richard Arkwright thus became accepted as the pioneer of cotton spinning in factories, not only because he had better machines, but also because he was more effective at tackling the problems of discipline and organization.
“…operated on the basis of 12 hour day. Employees worked six hours before midday meal break and six hours after….for a hundred years.”
p. 107
“In the manufacture of calicoes, yarn spun on Arkwright’s machines proved suitable. Arkwright had been lobbying the government and had persuaded it to reduce the excise duty payable on calicoes made in Britain."
p. 120
Arnold Pacey, Technology in World Civilization
Some stories
are more than just a good yarn.
How do we explain things?
1: read your papers to one another -- explain your thesis to others
2: what are you trying to tell each other
3: communicating complexity
stories | time line for technology | terms | complexity of technological change
Pacey, World | Pursell | Pacey, Meaning | Postman
