James Hargreaves

Inventor, probably born in Blackburn, Lancashire, NW England, UK. An illiterate weaver and carpenter, c.1764 he invented the spinning jenny (named after his daughter); but his fellow spinners broke into his house and destroyed his frame (1768). He moved to Nottingham, where he erected a spinning mill, and continued to manufacture yarn until his death.

James Hargreaves (1720 – 22 April 1778) was a weaver and carpenter in Lancashire, England.

Along with Richard Arkwright, Hargreaves is one of the most famous names of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, yet little is known of him as a person.

The idea for the jenny is said to have come from the inventor seeing a one-thread wheel overturned upon the floor, when both the wheel and the spindle continued to revolve. This idea may have come from Hargreaves, or perhaps from Thomas Highs, who had a daughter called Jenny: the sources given below are in conflict.

Whoever the inventor was, he designed a frame, in one part of which he placed eight rovings in a row, and in another part a row of eight spindles. The result was to increase production by a factor of eight, and the number of spindles was later increased to sixteen and gradually to a hundred. Hargreaves certainly developed the idea from its crude beginnings.

Opposition to the machine caused Hargreaves to leave for Nottingham, where the cotton hosiery industry benefited from the increased provision of suitable yarn. Hargreaves made jennies for a man called Shipley, and in July 1770, he took out a patent, which enabled him to take legal action against the Lancashire manufacturers who had begun using it.