What was the primary bottleneck for production that Edmund Cartwright's 1785 Power Loom solved?
Answer
The slow speed of manual looms compared to mechanized spinning output.
By the 1780s, mechanized spinning advancements, driven by inventions like the Water Frame and the Spinning Mule, had increased cotton goods production tenfold since 1770. This massive increase in thread availability meant that the weavers, still operating manual handlooms, became the new limiting factor in the overall production chain. Edmund Cartwright, a carpenter and blacksmith, addressed this by designing the Power Loom, patented in 1785. This mechanized device used gears, pulleys, and belts connected to an external power source to automate the weaving itself, with a single working loom capable of replacing as many as thirty separate handlooms.
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