Beginnings of the Machine Age in New England: Documents Relating to the Introduction of the Power Loom

Abstract

Any attempt to describe the beginnings of the Machine Age in the United States leads the investigator back to the early records of the New England textile mills, for machine building in this country — using the term machinery in its modern meaning — had its origin in the workshops of the first cotton factories. Among the heroes of the period of beginnings are David Wilkinson, — the Pawtucket blacksmith, who, in 1790, assisted Samuel Slater to build the first Arkwright machinery to be successfully operated in the United States, and who, twenty years later, set up one of the earliest independent machine shops in New England, — and Francis Cabot Lowell, who, in 1814, introduced power weaving at the factory in Waltham, thus setting in motion the chain of events that led to the establishment of the great machine shops at Lowell.