Who was Richard Arkwright? Everything You Need to Know

Quick Facts

British Celebrities Born In December

Also Known As: Sir Richard Arkwright

Died At Age: 59

Family:

Spouse/Ex-: Margaret Biggins, Patience Holt

children: Richard Arkwright junior, Susanna Arkwright

Inventors British Men

Died on: August 3, 1792

place of death: Cromford, England

City: Preston, England

discoveries/inventions: Spinning Frame, Water Frame

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Childhood & Early Life

Richard Arkwright was born in Preston, Lancashire, England on 23 December 1732. His father, Thomas, was a tailor and a Preston Guild burgess, and his mother’s name was Sarah. Richard was the youngest of 13 children.

His family was a humble one and his parents did not have enough money to send him to school, so he learnt to read and write from a cousin.

As a young man he was apprenticed to a barber in a nearby town.

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Career

He embarked on a career as a barber and wig-maker. He was an intelligent and hard working young man and soon set up his own shop at Churchgate in Bolton in the early 1750s.

Blessed with a creative bent of mind, he invented a waterproof dye for use on a type of fashionable wigs called ‘periwigs’. Over a period of time he expanded his business and he travelled across the country buying human hair for use in the manufacture of wigs.

He came into contact with weavers and spinners in his profession as a wig-maker and when the market for his wigs started declining he decided to enter the textile business.

In the 1760s he became fascinated with spinning machineries and began the construction of his first machine—a mechanical device for spinning cotton thread. Working along with a clockmaker, John Kay, he worked on the spinning machine and finally patented the spinning frame in 1769.

Even though he had invented the spinning frame, there were still several problems involved in the process of spinning that needed to be addressed. The raw cotton had to be prepared by a hand process and the spinning frame had to be made suitable for practical wide-spread use to be commercially viable.

Arkwright started making improvements to a carding machine that Lewis Paul had invented in 1748. He then developed a new carding engine which converted raw cotton buds into a continuous skein of cotton fibers which could then be spun into yarn, and got a patent for this invention in 1775.

He needed more capital to put his invention to practical use and found partners in Jedediah Strutt and Samuel Need, who were wealthy hosiery manufacturers open to experimentation. Working together, the three men built the world's first water-powered mill at Cromford in 1771.

He invested more money in his machines and mechanized all the preparatory and spinning processes. Eventually he went on to develop mills in which the whole process of yarn manufacture was carried on by a single machine. This coupled with division of labor greatly improved the efficiency of the production process.

His inventions and entrepreneurial skills helped to completely mechanize the process of thread manufacture, and all the operations involved in the process could now be coordinated and carried out under one roof. This was the precursor to what was to become the “factory system”.

He became a very successful businessman and established factories in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Scotland. He was an aggressive entrepreneur and a difficult man to work with. He was also known for his insensitive treatment of the workers in his factory.

Major Work

Richard Arkwright is best known as 'the Father of the Industrial Revolution'. He is credited to have devised a method of mass-production that not only increased the efficiency of machines, but also standardized products, and enabled the manufacturers to earn increased profits.

Awards & Achievements

Richard Arkwright was knighted in 1786 in recognition of his achievements.

Personal Life & Legacy

In 1755 he married Patience Holt and they had a son the same year. Unfortunately his wife died in 1756.

A few years later he married Margaret Biggins in 1761. They had three children of whom only one survived to adulthood.

He died on 3 August 1792, at the age of 59. He was a wealthy man at the time of his death, with factories in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire and Scotland, and a fortune of £500,000.

Richard Arkwright Biography