Textiles and leather: a brief history of textile machinery
Textiles and Leather: A Brief History of Textile Machines
Even in prehistoric times, humans had learned to make ropes for hunting and traps (perhaps by rubbing bundles of grass between their leg and hand). Over time, they learned to spin fibers such as jute, hemp, flax, and cotton, and to use yarns to weave nets and clothes. By the time civilizations flourished in the Near and Middle East about 6000 years ago, people already knew how to dye fabrics with vegetable dyes.
From then on, no sensational progress was made until about 200 years ago, when machines capable of spinning and weaving were built. These machines were the forerunners of the Industrial Revolution. Then, in 1856, William Henry Perkin prepared a mauve dye in the laboratory, the first of thousands of artificial dyes.
The second major breakthrough occurred in 1884 when Count Hilaire de Chardonnet found a way to break down the natural cellulose molecule into a series of much smaller molecules and create the first artificial fiber, rayon. In 1939, Wallace Carothers extracted the first synthetic fiber, entirely man-made, from coal distillation products: nylon.
