John Kay

This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations of additional sources. (June 2009)

John Kay (17 June 1704 – 1780) was the inventor of the flying shuttle, which was a key contribution to the Industrial Revolution.

The Memorial to John Kay in Bury, Lancashire, England

He was born in Bury, Lancashire, England. The flying shuttle greatly accelerated the speed at which weaving could be performed by allowing the shuttle carrying the weft to be passed through the warp threads more quickly and over a greater width of cloth. The production of cotton yarn was generally insufficient to keep up with the demand for hand-loom weavers, so his invention was not appreciated by weavers who thought it would steal their jobs; consequently he was persecuted and his constructions were damaged or destroyed. He fled England to France to try and sell his invention in that market, but he failed there as well and died from being poor. His son Robert stayed in England, and developed the drop box, which allowed looms to use wefts of multiple colours. Ford Madox Brown portrayed Kay and his invention in a mural painting in Manchester Town Hall.

This John Kay should not be confused with the clockmaker from Warrington who was associated with Richard Arkwright in the invention of the spinning frame.

Some sources^[which?] claim that John Kay had a connection with Colchester in Essex.(One source actually - Lt Col Thomas Sutcliffe, one of Kay's grandsons - who toured giving lectures and writing letters in the 1840s on the subject. He was confused and inaccurate about the details of JK's geneaoloy and story and even the date of the invention of the flying shuttle. His version of history was comprehensively demolished by John Lord in his "Memoir of John Kay" privately published posthumously in Rochdale in 1903. Sutclife's purpose seems to have been to try to lay claim to public funds in compensation for the treatment of JK by the "Shuttle Clubs" etc. Other sources for the Colchester link all derive from the good soldier Sutcliffe)Whilst Colchester had a long association with weaving and the wool trade this link seems to rely on an 1848 source (White's History Gazetteer and Directory of the County of Essex) which has been repeated uncritically by later writers. There is an exploration of this in an article by Don Scott in the Essex Journal which finds no independent evidence of the Colchester connection. This article also explores the archives of the Royal Society of Arts and their dealings with John Kay.

References

External links

• Essay on John Kay and the flying shuttle
• Essay from the Cotton Times
• Essay on the two John Kays of the Industrial Revolution
• Cotton Town website