In what century did wooden looms appear? Who invented the loom? History of the creation of the weaving loom

If you ask the question what thing in the everyday life of a modern person is of paramount importance, the answers will be different. Perhaps they will name soap, furniture, dishes... And yet, without a doubt, such useful things can somehow be done, although it’s not easy to even imagine. But if fabric completely disappears from everyday use, then the world around us, you see, will change beyond recognition. After all, clothes are made from fabric, not to mention many other uses of this material.
So the invention of yarn - threads made from wool or plant fibers - and the method of making fabric from yarn are incredibly significant achievements for humanity. And it is not at all by chance that perhaps the first production processes that people tried to mechanize were precisely the production of yarn and fabric. Moreover, technical achievements in this area seemed to spur inventive thought in other directions. Perhaps not everyone knows that the industrial revolution of the 18th century, which led to the massive appearance of a wide variety of machines, began precisely with the invention of a fairly advanced loom.
However, it is, of course, better to tell about how a person became a weaver in order...
The oldest samples of fabric that have survived to this day are several thousand years old. Archaeologists have more than once found thin linen cloths in ancient Egyptian tombs, as well as denser material painted with colored designs. Due to the fact that Egypt has a dry climate and no sudden temperature changes, the ancient fabric is well preserved.
Based on these archaeological finds, it can be judged that the work of ancient Egyptian weavers was of very high quality, although they made the fabric by hand. Under a strong magnifying glass, it is clearly visible that the threads of ancient fabrics are intertwined very neatly, lying both along and across in even, straight lines. However, why be surprised: the ancient Egyptians were far from the first weavers - people began to learn the art of weaving threads to make fabrics from them thousands of years before Egyptian civilization. And they were prompted to such an idea by an even more ancient skill - weaving baskets, bedding, nets, shoes from flexible branches, reeds, and long shoots of grass. Our distant primitive ancestors already knew how to do this.
However, none of these materials were suitable for making fabrics. But even here nature itself came to the aid of primitive man. Inquisitive ancestors noticed that elastic and durable fibers can be extracted from many plants, such as flax, cotton, hemp and even nettle.
Pet hair was also suitable for this. But it took a lot of work to make yarn from the fibers. Extracting fiber from flax stalks, for example, is particularly difficult. And the wool must first be cleaned, washed thoroughly, and dried. Long, strong threads were twisted from the prepared raw materials. This process is called spinning, and the resulting threads are called yarn. And already thousands of years ago, man tried to somehow rationalize spinning by inventing a spindle - a rod made of wood or stone on which the finished thread was wound. It had to be twisted manually, gradually pulling out bundles of fibers from the prepared raw materials. Looking ahead a little, it is worth saying that, in the end, man invented the spinning wheel. Now the spinner turned the wheel by hand, connected to the spindle by a belt drive. Rotating, the spindle itself gradually pulled out bundles of fibers, turning them into threads of yarn. Well, as for the process of making fabric, it was also gradually rationalized. True, at the dawn of weaving it was quite simple.
You can imagine what simple devices primitive weavers used to work with. Two strong branches with flyers on top were driven into the ground. They held a wooden rod. Approximately the same device, only lower, is made on a camping trip to hang a kettle over a fire. Ancient weavers tied strands of yarn to this rod, one next to the other, hanging down to the ground. To prevent them from getting tangled, weights were attached to their ends. By the way, to this day these longitudinal threads are called warp in textile production. To turn the warp into fabric, the longitudinal threads must be intertwined with transverse ones, which are called weft.
This process itself was simple, although labor-intensive. The weaver passed the weft through the warp in such a way that it passed, for example, on top of the even threads and under the bottom of the odd ones, and vice versa in the opposite direction. The most convenient way to do this was with a pointed stick on which the weft thread was wound. At the same time, it was necessary to ensure that the threads lay evenly and tightly to one another. So gradually the threads turned into fabric. It could be different - light from linen yarn, coarse and warm from wool. Be that as it may, primitive man finally had the opportunity to put on clothes made of fabric. He learned to sew even earlier, making clothes from animal skins...

Gradually, weaving production improved. First, the ancient inventors realized: if you lift all the even or odd warp threads at once, then the wefts can be thrown under them to the other side in one movement. Therefore, wooden planks called hedges appeared at the ends of the warp threads. Even-numbered threads were attached to one plank, and odd-numbered ones to the other. The master, lifting first one heddle, then the other, sequentially separated the threads from each other and threw the wefts from right to left, then from left to right. The weaving process has become tens of times faster. All that remained was to guess that with the help of additional heddles it was possible to lift other warp threads in a certain order, making their interweaving with the weft more complex. Thus, a certain pattern could be obtained on the fabric. Weavers widely used such “tricks” already in ancient times.
Gradually the loom became just that: a loom. In the Middle Ages, for example, the master controlled the blades by pressing the pedals with his feet, while his hands remained free. Ducks could be thrown right or left much faster, and labor productivity increased. However, the fabric turned out to be narrow, just as long as the weaver’s arm was long enough.

But finally the 18th century came, when major changes took place in textile production. This is the merit of the English inventors John Kay and Edmund Cartwright. The first of them, in 1733, came up with the design of a mechanical shuttle for weft thread. The shuttle moved along the guides, dragging the thread behind it, driven by the blows of special wooden hammers mounted on both sides of the machine frame. After each movement of the shuttle, the warp wound on the roller moved forward one “step,” making room for a new “stitch.” John Kay's shuttle was called "aircraft".
It is with this invention that the industrial revolution can be considered to have begun. The fact is that shuttle-aircraft looms made it possible to produce much more fabric than before. Weaving enterprises began to run out of yarn, which was still produced by hand. It was necessary to invent a spinning machine, which was done in 1765 by another English inventor, James Hargreaves. A few years later, spinning factories appeared in England, the machines of which were powered by water engines.
Finally, in the mid-80s, Edmund Cartwright invented a weaving loom, where all operations were mechanized. Just at that time, another Englishman, James Watt, completed work on his steam engine. And Cartwright built a weaving factory with twenty looms, installing a Watt machine to drive them. So the steam engine found its first widespread use in the weaving industry.
Of course, in the future the loom was continuously improved. Of particular note is the French inventor Joseph Marie Jacquard. In 1801, he created... a programmable loom. Punch cards were used for this - cardboard plates with holes punched on them in a certain order. The punched cards were connected into a strip that was placed on top of the machine. Each punched card controlled the movements of the warp threads in a certain way, “asking” the machine a program to create a particular pattern on the fabric. By pressing the pedal, the master could move the ribbon of punched cards and change the program. Later, with the help of punched cards, they began to set programs for metal-cutting machines, but the weaving machine was the first!
Well, modern weaving looms are complex, well-designed units. Their designs are different - there are multi-shuttle machines, and there are machines without shuttles - the weft thread transfers compressed air. But the main principle of making fabrics by interlacing warp and weft remains the same as what was invented by primitive man.

Igorev, V. How the industrial revolution began from a loom... /V. Igorev //Why?. – 2008. - No. 10. – P. 24-26.

On April 4, 1785, the Englishman Cartwright received a patent for a mechanical loom. The name of the inventor of the first loom is unknown. However, the principle laid down by this man is still alive: the fabric consists of two systems of threads located mutually perpendicular, and the task of the machine is to intertwine them.
The first fabrics made more than six thousand years ago, during the Neolithic era, have not reached us. However, evidence of their existence - parts of the loom - can be seen.

At first, the threads were woven using manual force. Even Leonardo da Vinci, no matter how hard he tried, could not invent a mechanical loom.

Until the 18th century, this task seemed insurmountable. And only in 1733, the young English clothier John Kay made the first mechanical (aka airplane) shuttle for a handloom. The invention eliminated the need to manually throw the shuttle and made it possible to produce wide fabrics on a machine operated by one person (previously two were required).

Kay's work was continued by the most successful weaving reformer, Edmund Cartwright.

It is curious that he was a pure humanist by training, an Oxford graduate with a Master of Arts degree. In 1785, Cartwright received a patent for a foot-powered power loom and built a spinning and weaving mill in Yorkshire for 20 such devices. But he did not stop there: in 1789 he patented a combing machine for wool, and in 1992 - a machine for twisting ropes and ropes.
Cartwright's mechanical loom in its original form was still so imperfect that it did not pose any serious threat to hand weaving.

Therefore, until the first years of the 19th century, the position of weavers was incomparably better than that of spinners; their incomes showed only a barely noticeable downward trend. As early as 1793, “muslin weaving was a gentleman's craft. The weavers in all their appearance resembled officers in the highest rank: in fashionable boots, a ruffled shirt and with a cane in their hand, they went for their work and sometimes brought it home in a carriage.”

In 1807, the British Parliament sent a memorandum to the government, which stated that the inventions of the Master of Arts contributed to the improvement of the country's welfare (and this is true, England was not for nothing then known as the “workshop of the world”).

In 1809, the House of Commons allocated 10 thousand pounds sterling to Cartwright - completely unthinkable money at that time. After which the inventor retired and settled on a small farm, where he worked on improving agricultural machines.
Cartwright's machine almost immediately began to be improved and modified. And no wonder, because the weaving factories made serious profits, and not only in England. In the Russian Empire, for example, thanks to the development of weaving in the 19th century, Lodz turned from a small village into a huge city by the standards of that time with a population of several hundred thousand people. Millions of fortunes in the empire were often made precisely in the factories of this industry - just remember the Prokhorovs or Morozovs.
By the 1930s, a lot of technical improvements had been added to the Cartwright machine. As a result, there were more and more such machines in factories, and they were serviced by fewer and fewer workers.
New obstacles stood in the way of a steady increase in labor productivity. The most labor-intensive tasks when working on mechanical machines were changing and charging the shuttle. For example, when making the simplest calico on a Platt loom, the weaver spent up to 30% of his time on these operations. Moreover, he had to constantly monitor the breakage of the main thread and stop the machine to correct the defects. Given this state of affairs, it was not possible to expand the service area.

Only after the Englishman Northrop came up with a way to automatically charge a shuttle in 1890 did factory weaving make a real breakthrough. Already in 1996, Northrop developed and brought to market the first automatic loom. This subsequently allowed thrifty factory owners to save a lot on wages. Next came a serious competitor to the automatic loom - a weaving machine without a shuttle at all, which greatly increased the ability of one person to service several devices. Modern weaving machines are developing in the computer and automatic directions familiar to many technologies. But the most important thing was done more than two centuries ago by the inquisitive Cartwright.

Weaving is an ancient craft, the history of which begins with the period of the primitive communal system and accompanies humanity at all stages of development. A necessary prerequisite for weaving is the availability of raw materials. At the weaving stage, these were strips of animal skin, grass, reeds, vines, young shoots of bushes and trees. The first types of woven clothing and shoes, bedding, baskets and nets were the first weaving products. It is believed that weaving preceded spinning, since it existed in the form of weaving even before man discovered the spinning ability of the fibers of certain plants, among which were wild nettles, “cultivated” flax and hemp. The developed small-scale cattle breeding provided various types of wool and down.

Of course, none of the types of fibrous materials could survive for a long time. The oldest fabric in the world is linen fabric, found in 1961 during excavations of an ancient settlement near the Turkish village of Catal Huyuk and made around 6500 BC. It is interesting that until recently this fabric was considered to be wool, and only a careful microscopic examination of more than 200 samples of old woolen fabrics from Central Asia and Nubia showed that the fabric found in Turkey was linen.

During excavations of settlements of the lake inhabitants of Switzerland, a large amount of fabrics made from bast fibers and wool was discovered. This served as further evidence that weaving was known to people of the Stone Age (Paleolithic). The settlements were opened in the winter of 1853-1854. That winter turned out to be so cold and dry that the level of the alpine lakes in Switzerland dropped sharply. As a result, local residents saw the ruins of pile settlements, covered with centuries-old silt. During excavations of settlements, a number of cultural layers were discovered, the lowest of which are dated to the Stone Age. Coarse, but quite usable fabrics made from bast fibers, bast and wool were found. Some fabrics were decorated with stylized human figures painted with natural colors.

In the 70s of the twentieth century, with the development of underwater archeology, research into settlements in the vast Alpine region on the borders of France, Italy and Switzerland began again. The settlements dated from 5000 to 2900 BC. e. Many remains of fabrics were found, including twill weave, balls of thread, reeds of wooden looms, wooden spindles for spinning wool and flax, and various needles. All finds indicate that the inhabitants of the settlements were engaged in weaving themselves.
In Ancient Egypt, a horizontal frame was preferred. A person working near such a frame would certainly have to stand. From the words “stand, stand” the words “stan”, “machine” come from. It is curious that weaving was considered the highest of the craft arts in Ancient Greece. Even noble ladies practiced it. In the famous work “The Iliad” by Homer, for example, it is mentioned that Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta Menelaus, because of whom, according to legend, the Trojan War broke out, received as a gift a golden spindle whorl - a weight for a spindle, which gave it greater rotational inertia.

The first fabrics were very simple in structure

. As a rule, they were produced using plain weave. However, quite early they began to produce ornamented fabrics, using religious symbols and simplified figures of people and animals as decorative elements. The ornament was applied to raw fabrics by hand. Later they began to decorate fabrics with embroidery. In the historical period of the last centuries of Christianity, the type of trellis weaving on looms that appeared in Europe in the Middle Ages gained popularity. This type of weaving made carpets popular, which were woven both with pile and smooth. Tapestry weaving in Western Europe developed from the 11th century until the 17th century, when in France in 1601 the workshop of the Gobelle brothers arose, who produced smooth woven material with rep weave of threads, creating an original pattern of the play of threads on the material. The workshop was noticed by the French king himself, who bought it to work for the royal court and wealthy nobles, thereby providing the workshop with a constant income. The workshop became famous. And such woven material has since been called a tapestry, similar to a mat.
A loom is a mechanism used to produce various textile fabrics from threads, an auxiliary or main tool for the weaver. There are a huge number of types and models of machines: manual, mechanical and automatic, shuttle and shuttleless, multi-shank and single-shank, flat and round. Weaving looms are also distinguished by the types of fabric produced - wool and silk, cotton, iron, glass and others.
The loom consists of a hem, a shuttle and a hip, a beam and a roller. Two types of threads are used in weaving - warp thread and weft thread. The warp thread is wound on a beam, from which it unwinds during the work process, going around the roller that performs the guiding function, and passing through the lamellas (holes) and through the eyes of the heddles, moving upward for the shed. The weft thread passes into the shed. This is how the fabric appears on the loom. This is the operating principle of a loom.

At the end of the 19th - mid-20th centuries. weaving in Moldavia was a widespread women's occupation with deep traditions. The materials for weaving were hemp and wool; flax was used much less. From the middle of the 19th century. purchased cotton thread came into use. The process of preparing fiber for spinning was lengthy. Yarn processing and weaving were carried out using homemade tools. The specifically Moldavian method of spinning on the move was using a spinning wheel with an elongated shaft, strengthened by the spinner behind her belt. The peasant family independently produced various fabrics necessary for sewing clothes, used for household needs and decorating the interiors of the home. Moldavian women wove many towels on a horizontal weaving mill ("stand"), using various types of techniques (branch, choice, mortgage). Some towels were mandatory attributes of wedding, maternity and funeral ceremonies, others were used for household needs, and others were used to decorate the interior of the home. Ornaments on towels for ritual or decorative purposes were a rhythmic repetition of one geometric or floral motif.

Carpet weaving
The centuries-old traditions of Moldavian carpet weaving led to the emergence of a distinctive type of carpet, made on a vertical weaving mill using the kilim technique. As a rule, women were engaged in carpet weaving, and men participated only in preparatory work. The ability to weave carpets was highly valued among the people. Girls began to learn this craft at the age of 10-11. Each bride's dowry, among many other necessary household items, necessarily included carpets. They testified to the wealth in the girl’s family and the hard work of the future housewife. The process of making a carpet was extremely labor-intensive: carpets and runners from two to three kilograms of wool were woven in two to three weeks, and a large carpet from 10-15 kilograms of wool was made in three to four months, working together.
Decor of Moldovan carpets
The Moldavian lint-free carpet is characterized by clarity of composition and shaped balance, which does not imply strict symmetry. The skillful use of natural dyes by Moldovan carpet makers determined the color richness of the carpet. The light background of carpet products, characteristic of the late 18th - first half of the 19th centuries, was then replaced by a range of black, brown, green and red-pink tones. The pattern was based on geometric and plant motifs; zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images were less common in carpet compositions. The types of Moldavian carpets, their ornamentation and terminology differed depending on the place of use.

Moldavian carpet weaving reached its peak in the 18th - early 19th centuries. One of the characteristic features of Moldavian carpets was the variety of ornamental motifs. The most common are floral patterns depicting trees, flowers, bouquets, fruits, as well as geometric ones - rhombuses, squares, triangles. Less common are images of human figures, animals and birds. In the distant past, ornamental motifs had a certain symbolic character. One of the most common motifs was the “tree of life,” representing the strength and power of nature, its eternal development and movement. The image of a female figure was considered a symbol of fertility. Over the years, the original meaning of many common ornamental compositions has been lost.

The size and purpose of the carpet, the nature of the motifs, the color scheme, the central pattern and border determined its ornamental composition. One of the most common techniques was the alternation of floral or geometric motifs along the entire length of the carpet. On many carpets, the central pattern consisted of a repetition of one or two motifs, having a vertical or horizontal direction. In areas of the carpet not filled with main patterns, small motifs-signs could be located (year of manufacture, initials of the owner or carpet maker, household items, etc.). An important role in the decorative design of the carpet was played by the border, which differed from the central pattern in both color and pattern. Typically, Moldavian carpets had a two-, three-, or four-sided border. Since ancient times, ornamental motifs and carpet compositions have had names. In the 19th century the most common names were “Rainbow”, “Loaf”, “Nut Leaf”, “Vase”, “Bouquet”, “Spider”, “Cockerels”. When creating a carpet, Moldavian craftswomen always solved a seemingly already known composition or ornamental motif in a new way. Therefore, each of their products is unique and inimitable.
Traditional dyes
Another important feature of Moldovan carpets is their amazing colors. The traditional Moldavian carpet is characterized by calm and warm tones and color harmony. Previously, solutions prepared from flowers, plant roots, tree bark, and leaves were used to dye wool. Mackerel, dandelion flowers, oak bark, walnut and onion peels were often used to obtain dyes. Carpet makers knew how to determine the time of harvesting plants, knew the best combinations of plant materials, and had excellent knowledge of wool dyeing methods. Natural dyes gave the old folk carpet extraordinary expressiveness. The most common colors were brown, green, yellow, pink, and blue. If any motif was repeated in a carpet composition, it was done in a different color each time, which gave it undoubted originality. With the appearance in the second half of the 19th century. aniline dyes expanded the color spectrum of Moldavian carpets, but the artistic value decreased somewhat, since pastel, calm tones gave way to bright, sometimes devoid of sense of proportion, chemical dyes.
Moldavian carpet in the 20th century

During the twentieth century. carpet weaving continued to develop. The leading ornamental compositions in rural areas continued to be “Bouquet” and “Wreath”, bordered by garlands of flowers in combination with geometric motifs. The colors of modern carpets have become brighter and more saturated. Some subjects were borrowed from factory fabric patterns. The creativity of Moldovan carpet weavers had a certain influence on the carpet weaving of other nations, as well as samples of factory carpets, both domestic and imported. Despite the improvement of a number of technological processes on vertical weaving mills, the main work of rural carpet weavers, as before, was done manually. Carpet weaving is most widespread in the Moldovan villages of Baraboi, Plop, Criscautsi, Livedeni, Badichany, Petreni, Tabora and others. Also in Moldova there are Ukrainian villages, such as Moshana, Maramonovka, etc., where carpet weaving is also widespread.

Fabrics and weaving have been known to mankind since time immemorial, shrouded in antiquity. The history of the fabric is the result of enormous human labor on improving the production process: from hand weaving to advanced technologies of the global textile industry. The inventions of ancient peoples laid the foundation for a weaving tradition that is widely used in our time.

The history of fabric: how it all began

Humanity has needed to protect its body from cold and heat since the dawn of its existence. The first materials for primitive clothing were animal skins, shoots and leaves of plants, which the ancient inhabitants wove by hand. Historians know that already in the period of the 8th-3rd millennia BC, humanity knew the practical properties of flax and cotton.

• In Ancient Greece and Rome grown, from which fiber was extracted and the first coarse fabrics were woven.
• In Ancient India for the first time they began to produce, which were generously decorated with bright printed designs.
• Silk fabrics are historical property of China.
• And the first wool fibers and, accordingly, fabrics made from them arose during the time of Ancient Babylon, in the 4th millennium BC.

History of weaving: time machine

The history of weaving originates in Asia and Ancient Egypt, where the invention of the loom took place. This apparatus consisted of a frame with several slats on which the warp threads were stretched. Weft threads were woven into them by hand. Operating principles of the first machine have survived into today's weaving industry. However, the design itself has gone through many changes.

Much later, in The horizontal loom was invented in the 11th century AD, on which the warp threads were stretched horizontally. The structure of the unit was more complex. The main parts were attached to the large wooden frame of the machine:

• 3 rollers;
• 2 foot pedals;
• vertical frames of the reed “comb”;
• shuttle with thread.

Our ancestors began to mechanize the machine in the 16th-18th centuries, and the greatest success was crowned with invention in 1733 of the so-called airplane machine by J. Kay. Half a century later, the Briton E. Cartwright invented a mechanical loom, the design of which was further modified and improved. By the end of the 19th century there were mechanical machines with automatic replacement of shuttles.

And already in the 20th century, shuttleless machines similar to our modern models were invented.

Types of looms

As has already become clear from the previous section, looms are shuttle and shuttleless, more modern.

Types of shuttleless weaving looms are distributed depending on the weaving principle of the weft thread.