Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1885 — Knitting Machines. [ARTICLE]

Knitting Machines.

The art of knitting stockings in said to have originated in Scotland about the close of the fifteenth century. In less than one hundred years it gave rise to suoh an industry that On t the first attempt to apply machinery to it—in the invention of the stocking-frame by Wm. Lee, in 1589 —the short-sighted government refused letters patent to the new invention on the plea that it would destroy the market for hand-made goods and ruin thousands of ' stocking-knitters. Lee took his machine to France and established a factory at Bouen, but he was soon driven from this place by political troubles, and died on his way to England, having reaped nothing but loss from his valuable invention. His brother took it up, secured a patent for it, and established a stocking factory in Nottinghamshire, England, which has ever since been the center of the stocking manufacture in England. The Leo machines were introduced in this country in the eighteenth century, first in Philadelphia and Germantown, then in New York City and other places. The adaptation of the machine to power was first accomplished by Timothy Bailey, of Albany, in 1831, and the first machine thus run was at Cohoes, N. Y., in 1832. The original stocking frame produced a straight strip of web of any length desired, which was cut np and formed into the shape of a stocking; later, it is not known exactly when, this was improved upon by a frame producing a circular web, to be cut off in proper lengths and shaped. The knitting machine is very complicated in its mechanism, though the simple principle of forming loops in succession on a single thread, each one locked by that which follows it, is the one essential of'its work. There are a number of machines in use, each one distinguished by thq kind of needles they use, and also by the manner in winch these are arranged, whether on a straight horizontal line, all pointing the same way, or around an open horizontal circle, all pointing toward the center. The latter are known as'the rotary round machines. Every needle is hooked at the end, so as to hold the thread for each loop, while the loop previously formed on the same needle slips back on the shank as the needle is pushed forward, and on its return runs- over the hook and off the end. In the straight frames the work is done first across the needles in turn in one direction and then back in the other, and so on; but in the rotary round machines the needles are carried constantly round in the same direction, each one taking np the thread in turn. The machines made for family use are all simpler than those for factory work, are worked by a crank, or treadle, are much smaller, and use fewer stitches.— Inter Oceans