. A history of the United States. ther greatinvention. A clergyman, Edmund Cartwright, invented amachine, which was run by power, for weaving the yarn intocloth. This soon began to displace the hand-looms. Thepower was furnished at first by horses or water-wheels. The Steam-Engine. — About the same time James Wattinvented the steam-engine. Men had dreamed for ages ofusing the steam which escaped from a boiling kettle fordriving machinery. Hero, a Greek inventor of Alexandria inEgypt, more than one hundred years before Christ, attachedbent pipes to a boiler so that escaping steam caused thepipe
. A history of the United States. ther greatinvention. A clergyman, Edmund Cartwright, invented amachine, which was run by power, for weaving the yarn intocloth. This soon began to displace the hand-looms. Thepower was furnished at first by horses or water-wheels. The Steam-Engine. — About the same time James Wattinvented the steam-engine. Men had dreamed for ages ofusing the steam which escaped from a boiling kettle fordriving machinery. Hero, a Greek inventor of Alexandria inEgypt, more than one hundred years before Christ, attachedbent pipes to a boiler so that escaping steam caused thepipes to revolve in the same way as lawn sprinklers turn bythe flow of water. Watt showed how to introduce the steamfirst at one end of a cylinder and then at the other, so asto drive a piston back and forth. His engine was able tofurnish more power than a very large number of horses, andcould be used where water-wheels could not be set up, andcould take the place of the water-wheels when the rivers 252 THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE. were low. Watt began to manufacture his engines in years later Cartwright, who had been using an ox todrive his power-loom, adopted one of Watts engines. Theintroduction of the steam-engine made it necessary forspinning and weaving to be carried on in places where coalfor fuel was easily obtained. Factories. — These inventions led to the building of mills or factories. Hitherto spin-ning and weaving had beenhousehold industries. Womenhad often done the spinningin their leisure time. In somecountry districts whole fami-lies had spent the long winterevenings spinning yarn to sellto some weaver or to usein the family loom. Theordinary family or skilledweaver did not have money enough to buy the newmachines, nor a house large enough to hold them. There-fore, men with money built the factories, bought themachines, and paid spinners and weavers to run weavers still lived at home and tried to makecloth in the old way. But the cost of m
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