After Heilman became possessed of the idea of inventing a combing machine, he laboured incessantly at the project for several years, first in his native country and subsequently in England. The firm of Sharpe & Roberts, formerly so famous in connection with the self-actor mule, made him a model, which, however, did not perform what Heilman required. Afterwards he returned again to his native Alsace still possessed with the idea, and finally it is said that the successful inspiration came to him whilst watching his daughters comb out their long hair. The ultimate result was that he invented a machine which was shown at the great exhibition of London in 1851 and immediately attracted the attention of the textile manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Large sums of money were paid him by certain of the Lancashire cotton spinners for its exclusive use in the cotton trade. Certain of the woollen masters of Yorkshire did the same, for its exclusive application to their trade, and it was also adopted for other textiles, although Heilman himself only lived a short time after his great success. It must be understood that the comber is only used by a comparatively small proportion of the cotton spinners of the world. For all ordinary purposes a sufficiently good quality of yarn can be made without the comber, and no other machine in cotton spinning adds half as much as the comber to the expense of producing cotton yarn from the raw material. To show this point with greater force, it may be mentioned that the comber may make about 17 per cent. of waste, which is approximately as much as all the other machines in the mill put together would make. Its use, however, is indispensable in the production of the finest yarns, since no other machine can extract short fibre like the comber. It is seldom used for counts of yarn below 60's and often as fine yarns as 100's or more are made without the comber. In England its use is chiefly centred in the localities of Bolton, Manchester, and Bollington, although there is a little combing in Preston, Ashton under Lyne, and other places. Perhaps its greatest value consists in the fact that its use enables fine yarns to be made out of cotton otherwise much too poor in quality for the work; this being rendered possible chiefly by the special virtue possessed by the comber of extracting all fibres of cotton below a certain length. This of course has led to the increased production and consequently reduced price of the better qualities of yarn. Reverting now to the Heilman Comber as it stands to-day, an excellent idea of the machine as a whole will be gathered from the photograph in Fig. 31.