By 1825 his reputation had so increased that his firm, Sharp, Roberts & Company, was asked by a committee of the cotton manufacturers of Manchester to undertake the development of an automatic spinning mule. The spinners were the highest paid labor in Lancashire textile industry, but they were difficult to work with and prone to strike on a moment’s notice, closing the mills and throwing other workmen out of employment. The operators asked Roberts repeatedly to help them but he gave them no encouragement, as the problem was conceded to be difficult and he said he was not familiar with textile machinery. He had been thinking over the problem, however, and the third time they called on him he said that he now thought he could construct the required machinery. The result was the invention in 1825 of his delicate and complex automatic spinning mule in which hundreds of spindles “run themselves” with only the attention of a few unskilled helpers to watch for broken threads and mend them. This was one of the great textile inventions and has had an enormous influence on the development of the cotton industry. The next year, 1826, he went to Mülhouse in Alsace and laid the foundation of modern French cotton manufacture. Later he invented and patented a number of other important textile machines. With the development of the railway his firm began the manufacture of locomotives. They built more than 1500, and established a reputation equal to that of Stephenson & Company in Newcastle. The engines were built interchangeably to templates and gauges, and Roberts’ works were one of the first in England to grasp and use the modern system of interchangeable manufacture. In addition to all that has been mentioned, he invented the iron billiard table, a successful punching and shearing machine, the most powerful electro-magnet then made, a turret clock, a cigar-making machine and a system of constructing steamships and equipping them with twin screws having independent engines. With a wonderful mechanical genius, he was lacking in worldly wisdom and was a poor business man. He severed his connection with Sharp, Roberts & Company, became involved financially and finally died at London in 1864 in poverty. At his death a popular subscription, headed by Sir William Fairbairn and many of the nobility, was started to provide for his only daughter as a memorial of the debt which England owed him. The memoir of him in the “Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers” closes with the following words: “The career of Mr. Roberts was remarkable, and it should be carefully written by some one who could investigate impartially the numerous inventions and improvements to which claim could justly be laid for him, and who, at the same time, would, with equal justice, show where his inventions have been pirated.” It is a great pity that this was never done.