Arkwright took out his first patent in 1769, the same year that Watt patented his steam-engine with a separate condenser. A little later, with his partners Need and Strutt, he built a very complete factory at Cromford, on the Derwent River. He had already shown his power of originating and perfecting a working machine, now he showed an additional ability for organizing a great manufactory, and improving and adding new devices to his original model. This was the test of his strength, and perhaps the most wonderful part of his character. Many men have come upon new ideas, and many have sent them forth to improve the world’s work, but only a few have developed them, day in and day out, until they stand forth as a finished achievement. That is the gauge, the test that has proved the inventor. Not Watt’s first innovations on the stationary steam-engine, nor Stephenson’s building of his original locomotive, nor Arkwright’s discovery that rollers could be used to draw the cotton, but the years of trial and improvement Watt spent at Birmingham, and Stephenson in his shops at Killingworth, and Arkwright in his factory at Cromford, have made the three men famous in history. They were the years of patience and perseverance, which must come in the life of every great inventor to test his strength. The country people about Cromford came to see Arkwright’s machines, and wonder at them, and sometimes to buy a dozen pairs of stockings that had been made of Arkwright’s yarn. But the big Manchester manufacturers refused to trade with him. The fine water-twist that was being spun on his spinning-frames was perfectly adapted to be used as warp, and would have supplied the demand for genuine cotton goods, which otherwise had to be imported from India. But, though they needed his yarn, the manufacturers would not buy it from him, and he was forced to find some way of using his large output himself. First he used it to manufacture stockings, and then, in 1773, to make, for the first time in England, fabrics entirely of cotton. This was the turning point in England’s trade in cotton goods. Heretofore she had not been able to meet the demands of her own people, now she was to commence a campaign that was ultimately to send her cloth to the farthest ends of the earth.