Textiles and leather: a brief history of textile machinery

Textiles and leather: a brief history of textile machinery

Already in prehistoric times humans had learned to make rope which he used for hunting and trapping (perhaps by rubbing between the leg and the hand of sheaves of grass.) Over time she learned to spin fibers such as jute , hemp, flax and cotton, and yarn used to weave nets and weaving garments. When about 6000 years ago, civilizations flourished in the Near and Middle East, people already knew colors, fabrics with vegetable dyes.

Since then no progress has been sensation until about 200 years ago, when they were built machines capable of spinning and weaving. These machines were the forerunners of the Industrial Revolution. Then, in 1856, William Henry Perkin made in the laboratory a tinge of mauve, the first of thousands of artificial colors.

The second major step was taken in 1884 when Count Hilaire de Chardonnet found a way to split the molecule of natural cellulose molecules in a series of very small pili and create the first artificial fiber, rayon. In 1939 Wallace Carothers revenue from products of the distillation of coal, the first synthetic fiber, produced entirely by man nylon.