John Heathcoat

Inventor, born in Duffield, Derbyshire, C England, UK. He designed a machine for making lace (patented in 1809), and set up a factory in Nottingham which was destroyed in 1816 by the Luddites. He then moved his business to Tiverton in Devon, installing greatly improved machines. He also invented machinery to make ribbon and net, and devised methods of winding raw silk from cocoons. He later became MP for Tiverton (1832–59).

John Heathcoat (August 7, 1783 – January 18, 1861) was an English inventor.

Heathcoat was born at Duffield near Derby. This machine made lace was also called English net or bobbinet.

This was by far the most expensive and complex textile apparatus till then existing;

Heathcoat had already bought an unoccupied woollen Mill in Tiverton, Devon. In fact he was overseeing work in Tiverton when the attack in Loughborough took place. He wrote to the Mayor of Tiverton, asking for protection for the Mill there, and in the letter disclosed:

"I have great apprehension of an immediate attack at this place also. In fact I believe the real cause of this mischief being done is principally, if not wholly, owing to the offence of removing here, and I have been informed upon undoubted authority that the Nottingham Lace Makers have sworn my entire destruction"

Undaunted by his loss, he continued to construct new and greatly improved machines in his new factory in Tiverton, propelling them by water-power and afterwards by steam. His claim to the invention of the twisting and traversing lace machine was disputed, and a patent was taken out by a clever workman for a similar machine, which was decided at a trial in 1816 to be an infringement of Heathcoat's patent. He followed his great invention by others of much ability, as, for instance, contrivances for ornamenting net while in course of manufacture and for making ribbons and platted and twisted net upon his machines, improved yarn spinning-frames, and methods for winding raw silk from cocoons.

He also patented an improved process for extracting and purifying salt. An offer of £10,000 was made to him in 1833 for the use of his processes in dressing and finishing silk nets, but he allowed the highly profitable secret to remain undivulged. Heathcoat was elected member of parliament for Tiverton in 1832. He retained his seat until 1859, and after two years of declining health he died on January 18, 1861 at Bolham House, near Tiverton.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.