How did john kay's invention contribute to the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 1

There are two John Kay's

They both came form the North of England and they were both involved in the development of cloth manufacturing processes, at around the same time. Helpful huh?

In the early 1700's the Industrial Revolution was just beginning. The hallmark of the revolution would be the replacement of skilled craftsmen and women with much faster unskilled or lesser skilled workers using machines and working together to produce goods faster and cheaper.

This can be seen quite easily in the production of cloth.

John Kay (1) was the inventor of the "flying shuttle" which allowed workers to weave on their hand looms faster and make wider cloth. This improves over the craft method of weavers on a small hand loam working to make cloth, however so much so that the need for spun thread doubled and the workers began to fear for their jobs as the shuttle required no skill to operate - just a back and forth motion, which would soon be automated and powered.

John Kay (2) invented a "spinning frame" largely in response to the demand created by the other John, this was a machine powered by turning a handle, which spun wool into thread. This removed the need for thousands of people sitting at home using spinning wheels - the classic sleeping beauty type - to make thread for the loams. It could now be done by a machine with no real skilled intervention. These machines were soon powered by horse or water and later steam rather than human hands.

Between them the Kays revolutionised the spinning and weaving industries, they greatly increased and centralised manufacture of cloth from wool and turned spinning and weaving from cottage industries of thousands of small skilled and semi skilled workers into a mass industry employing fewer people to make more cloth in huge mills, which later be came steam powered.

These vast steam powered mills became the very symbol of the industrial revolution.