In 1797 David Wilkinson invented a slide lathe which was patented the next year. The writer has not been able to obtain an accurate description of this. The most direct reference to it is a letter of Samuel Greene to Zachariah Allen, a prominent Rhode Island cotton manufacturer, dated June 17, 1861, which says: “I suppose David Wilkinson to be the inventor of the slide lathe, at first applied to the making of large press screws, for which I believe he got a patent. I know he made application to the British Government, and I have heard said did get a grant.” The patent ran out before the lathe came into general use. Fifty years later Congress voted Wilkinson $10,000 “for benefits accruing to the public service for the use of the principle of the gauge and sliding lathe, of which he was the inventor.”[130] He seems to have been working on it in America at the same time as Maudslay in London.[131] Sylvanus Brown, who helped Slater build the first Arkwright cotton machinery at Pawtucket, is also said to have invented the slide lathe still earlier (in 1791) and to have also used it for cutting wrought-iron screws for sperm-oil presses.[132] There are good records of Maudslay’s slide lathes; in fact, screw-cutting lathes made by him prior to 1800 are in the South Kensington Museum at London. Priority can hardly be claimed for these American lathes until something more is known of them, and whether they were the equal of Maudslay’s in design and quality. [130] The Senate Committee which recommended this action consisted of Rusk of Texas, Cass of Michigan, Davis of Mississippi, Dix of New York, and Benton of Missouri. The bill passed the Senate in June, and the House in August, 1848. [131] “Memoirs of the Wilkinson Family,” pp. 506-508, 518. Goodrich, p. 51. [132] Goodrich, p. 48. The Wilkinsons were closely identified with the early textile enterprises. As the gun industry developed the interchangeable system, so the cotton industry developed the American general machine tool. At the close of the Revolution, many attempts were made to start textile industries, by Orr in 1786, Cabot at Beverly in 1787, and Anthony at Providence in 1788, and also at Worcester. A man named Alexander is said to have operated the first loom with the flying shuttle in America, which was later moved to Pawtucket. Moses Brown, about 1790, imported a few spinning frames to Providence, but they proved a failure.