Samuel Smiles：Self-Help, Excerpt 70

He had in the mean time been occupying much of his leisure with inventions, more particularly in connection with the weaving of cotton and the preparation of the staple for spinning. One of his earliest contrivances was an embroidering-machine, in which twenty needles were employed, working simultaneously; and he succeeded in accomplishing his object after about six months’ labour. For this invention, which he exhibited at the Exposition of 1834, he received a gold medal, and was decorated with the Legion of Honour. Other inventions quickly followed—an improved loom, a machine for measuring and folding fabrics, an improvement of the “bobbin and fly frames” of the English spinners, and a weft winding-machine, with various improvements in the machinery for preparing, spinning, and weaving silk and cotton. One of his most ingenious contrivances was his loom for weaving simultaneously two pieces of velvet or other piled fabric, united by the pile common to both, with a knife and traversing apparatus for separating the two fabrics when woven. But by far the most beautiful and ingenious of his inventions was the combing-machine, the history of which we now proceed shortly to describe.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
Locator：Excerpt 70 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

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