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Biography of Richard Arkwright, SirName: Richard Arkwright, SirBirth Date: December 23, 1732 Death Date: August 3, 1792 Place of Birth: Preston, Lancashire, England Nationality: English Gender: Male Occupations: inventor, industrialist Richard Arkwright, Sir The English inventor and industrialist Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) developed several inventions which mechanized the making of yarn and thread for the textile industry. He also helped to create the factory system of manufacture.Richard Arkwright was born on Dec. 23, 1732, in Preston, Lancashire, England. Little is known of his early life except that he was from a large family of humble origin and obtained only the rudiments of an education. He was apprenticed to a barber in Preston, and when about 18 he set up on his own in Bolton, a textile town in Lancashire.Sometime in the 1760s Arkwright began working on a mechanical device for spinning cotton thread, the spinning frame, which he patented in 1769. Problems still remained: the raw cotton had to be prepared for the invention by a hand process, and the invention had to be made practical and commercially successful. For this he needed funds and a …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…by a prime mover, was not a new invention, Arkwright's rationalization of the factory system was nevertheless to become one of the most characteristic features of the industrial revolution.Wealth and honors, including the bestowal of knighthood, came to him in the 1780s. He died in Nottingham on Aug. 3, 1792. Further Reading Two works have been written on Arkwright's relations with associates: George Unwin, Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights (1924), and R. S. Fitton and A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758-1830 (1958). Supplementary accounts of Arkwright's work may be found in T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution: 1760-1830 (1948; rev. ed. 1964), and in Abbott Payson Usher's "The Textile Industry, 1750-1830," in Melvin Kranzberg and Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., eds., Technology in Western Civilization, vol. 1 (1967).Fitton, R. S., The Arkwrights: spinners of fortune, Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester University Press; New York, NY, USA: Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1989. |