The leading feature of the Jacquard loom consists of a chain of perforated pattern cards made to pass over a drum, through which cards certain needles pass, causing certain threads of the warp to rise and fall, according to the holes in the cards, and thus admitting at certain places in the warp coloured weft threads thrown by the shuttle, and reproducing the pattern which is perforated in the cards. The Jacquard device could be applied to any loom, and it worked a revolution in the manufacture of figured goods. The complexity and expensiveness of Jacquard’s loom were greatly reduced by subsequent improvements. In 1854 M. Bonelli constructed an electric loom in which the cards of the Jacquard apparatus are superseded by an endless band of tin-foiled paper, which serves as an electrical conductor to operate the warp thread needles, which before had each been actuated by a spiral spring. The Jacquard loom was also greatly improved by the English inventors, Barlow, Taylor, Martain and others. Radcliffe and Johnson, also of England, had invented and introduced the machines for dressing the yarns in one operation before the weaving; Horrocks and Marsland of Stockport greatly improved the adaptation of steam to the driving of looms, and Roberts of Manchester made striking advances in their mechanical parts and in bringing them to their present state of wonderful efficiency. In America, in 1836, George Crompton of Taunton, Massachusetts, commenced a series of inventions in power looms for the manufacture of fancy woollen goods, and in the details of such looms generally, particularly in increasing the speed of the shuttle, which vastly increased the production of such goods and gave to his looms a world-wide reputation. E. B. Bigelow of Massachusetts in 1848 invented a power loom, which was exhibited at the Exhibition at London in 1851, and astonished the world by his exhibition of carpets superior to any woven by hand. By the later improvements, and the aid of steam power, a single American Bigelow carpet loom can turn out now one hundred yards of Brussels carpet in a day, far superior in quality to any carpet which could possibly be made by hand, when a man toiled painfully to produce five yards a day. Mr. Bigelow was also a pioneer inventor of power machines for weaving coach lace, and cotton checks and ginghams. James Lyall of New York invented a power loom applicable either to the weaving of very wide and heavy fabrics, such as jute canvas for the foundation of floor oil cloth, or to fabrics made of the finest and most delicate yarns.