1732-1792
Inventor And Entrepreneur

Poor Beginnings. Richard Arkwright was born into a poor family and was reportedly the youngest of thirteen children. Unlike most boys of his economic circumstances, he learned to read, being taught by one of his uncles. He was apprenticed as a barber and worked for years making and selling wigs. When the market for wigs declined in the 1760s, he found himself looking for a new source of income. Textile merchants had been trying to invent a practical spinning machine since the early 1700s. James Hargreaves had recently invented the spinning jenny with which a spinner could produce fine (and delicate) yarn much more quickly. Arkwright's idea was quite different. Using an idea similar to a machine invented by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt in the 1730s, Arkwright imagined a machine that would use rollers to draw out and twist raw cotton...