After forty centuries of unchanged life, it occurred to John Kay of Bury, England, that the weaving process might be improved. In 1733 he had succeeded in inventing the picker motion, “picker peg,” or “fly.” This consisted of mechanical means for throwing the shuttle across the web by a sudden jerk of a bar--one at each side--operated by pulling a cord. He could thus throw the shuttle farther and quicker than by hand--make wider cloth, and do as much work in the same time as two men had done before. This improvement put weaving ahead of spinning, and the weavers were continually calling on the spindlers for more weft yarns. This set the wits of inventors at work to better the spinning means. At the same time that Kay was struggling with his invention of the flying shuttle, another poor man, but with less success, had conceived another idea, as to spinning. John Wyatt of Lichfield thought it would be a good thing to draw out the sliver of cotton or wool between two sets of rollers, one end of the sliver being held and fed by one set of rollers, while the opposite end was being drawn by the other set of rollers moving at a greater speed. His invention, although not then used, was patented in 1738 by Lewis Paul, who in time won a fortune by it, while Wyatt died poor, and it was claimed that Paul and not Wyatt was the true inventor. About 1764 a little accident occurring in the home of James Hargreaves, an English weaver of Blackburn, suggested to that observant person an invention that was as important as that of Kay. He was studying hard how to get up a machine to meet the weavers’ demands for cotton yarns. One day while Hargreaves was spinning, surrounded by his children, one of them upset the spinning wheel, probably in a children’s frolic, and after it fell and while lying in a horizontal position, with the spindle in a vertical position, and the wheel and the spindle still running, the idea flashed into Hargreaves’ mind that a number of spindles might be placed upright and run from the same power. Thus prompted he commenced work, working in secret and at odd hours, and finally, after two or three years, completed a crude machine, which he called the spinning jenny, some say after his wife, and others that the name came from “gin,” the common abbreviated name of an engine. This machine had eight or ten spindles driven by cords or belts from the same wheel, and operated by hand or foot. The rovings at one end were attached to the spindles and their opposite portions held together and drawn out by a clasp held in the hand. When the thread yarn was drawn out sufficiently it was wound upon the spindles by a reverse movement of the wheel. Thus finally were means provided to supply the demand for the weft yarns. One person with one of Hargreaves’ machines could in the same time spin as much as twenty or thirty persons with their wheels. But those who were to be most benefited by the invention were the most alarmed, for fear of