Page 45 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

1822 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Printed Cottons shops produced printed cottons at
Another fabric became as valuable price levels all could afford. Inven-
as lace and patterned-silk cloth dur- tions by Englishmen John Kay
ing the seventeenth century. Brightly (1733), James Hargreaves (1767),
painted and printed cottons from Richard Arkwright (1770s), and
India appealed to Europeans, and Samuel Crompton (1779) greatly
various Western trade companies set increased the production of spun
up the production of these calicoes cotton yarn in England. Two Am-
or chintzes in East India.To obtain a ericans also made significant con-
share of the profits being made on tributions. Eli Whitney’s 1793
the Indian prints, entrepreneurs in cotton gin made large-scale cotton
England and France began printing The cotton plant. production economically feasible.
imported cotton fabric. The popu- Samuel Slater, who had worked for
larity of the imported and domesti- Arkwright, partnered with two Prov-
cally printed calicoes forced silk and wool producers to idence, Rhode Island, merchants and set up a cotton
seek legislative restraints on the importation, local pro- spinning factory in Pawtucket.This manufactory, now the
duction, and use of the prints. After the bans were lifted Slater Mill Historic Site, was the beginning of the Indus-
in the mid-eighteenth century, printers, having perfected trial Revolution in America.
the use of mordants, sold many yards of block-printed
cottons to a public whose desire had not been abated by The Nineteenth Century
the legislation. and After
Laws passed to govern consumer expenditures, called By the beginning of the nineteenth century, spinning was
sumptuary laws, have seldom been effective, especially in no longer the rate-determining step in cloth production.
regulating printed cottons,lace,and figured silks.Whether Spinning mills in England and southern New England
to protect local production, as in this case, or to maintain had thousands of spindles.With the perfection of water-
social order by limiting consumption based on income,or powered looms after 1815 and cylinder printing in the
to limit worldly excesses as determined by religious twenties, printed cotton cloth that had been available
groups,sumptuary laws often fostered the development of only to the rich in the previous century sold for as little
illegal methods for consumers to obtain a product. as ten cents per yard. Hand-production of cloth dimin-
Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf of Jouy near Paris ished significantly in western Europe and the United
was the most successful early calico printer. Fast dyes and States. Dye technology also kept pace with other
well-cut blocks brought his manufactory fame and for- advancements, the most significant being the discovery in
tune. He was one of the printers in the latter eighteenth 1856 by William Perkin of mauve, the first synthetic dye.
century who experimented with faster methods of print- By the end of the century, most classes of dyes recognized
ing.The result was printing cloth with an engraved cop- today had been developed. Cylinder-printing technology
per plate on which the design was incised into the metal changed little after the mid-nineteenth century and
surface. Copperplate printing produced large-scale mono- remained the backbone of the industry until rotary-screen
chromatic patterns with very fine lines, which were not printing took over in the 1990s.
possible with wood blocks. Ever-seeking to increase pro- An additional change in the 150 years of printing with
duction, inventors finally perfected an engraved copper dyes also occurred then. Improvements in formulations
cylinder printing machine through which fabric moved to print pigments that are insoluble in water increased
continuously. By the 1820s European and American the amount of pigment printing significantly. In the