There is no doubt that this carding machine was made by Arthur Scholfield, or under his immediate supervision, sometime between 1803 and 1814. It may well be one of the machines sent to southern New Hampshire in 1809 or 1810, as it is known to have been run in Nashua and Jeffrey, New Hampshire, in the 1820's and 1830's, after which it was run by James Townsend in Marlboro, New Hampshire, from 1837 until 1890, when it was exhibited at the Mechanics Fair in Boston. Mr. Rufus S. Frost purchased the machine and owned it until his death in 1897. When the Frost estate was settled, the old Scholfield wool-carding machine was purchased by the Davis & Furber Machine Co., by which in 1954 it was presented to the National Museum. The disappearance of the original Scholfield carding machine is regrettable, but fortunately the Scholfields' importance to the American woolen industry does not depend on their having produced this one machine. These brothers, arriving here at a critical time in our nation's history, made important contributions to our economic and to our technological progress--John by his mill operations, Arthur by his ultimate work of constructing wool-carding machines for sale. Of these two aspects, it is the contribution of Arthur that has had the more far-reaching effect, for he spread his expert knowledge of mechanical wool carding, in the form of machines, throughout the New England woolen centers. His machines now stand as monuments to the work of both. FOOTNOTES: [1] The same type of hand cards were also used for cotton in Colonial America, but because the cotton fibers were not laid parallel in the sliver only coarse yarns could be spun. In ancient Peru the fibers for spinning fine cotton yarns were prepared with the fingers alone. In India the cotton fibers were combed with the fine-toothed jawbone of the boalee fish before the fibers were removed from the seed. (J.F. Watson, _The textile manufactures and the costumes of the people of India_, London, 1866, p. 64.) [2] Edward Baines, _History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain_, London, 1835, p. 176. [3] The wire points of the worker roller pick up the fibers from the faster moving main cylinder, carding the fibers on contact. A stripping action takes place when the wires of the worker roller meet the points of the stripper roller in a "point to back" action. This arrangement is used to remove the wool from the worker and put it back on the wire teeth of the main cylinder. Illustrated in W. Van Bergen and H.R. Mauersberger, _American wool handbook_, New York, 1948, p. 451. [4] The doffer comb, a serrated metal plate the length of the rollers, removes the carded fibers from the last roller or doffer.