1764Reputable sourceWell documented
The Spinning Jenny
On the timeline · around 1764 ·
What happened
Around 1764 the Lancashire weaver James Hargreaves built the spinning jenny, a hand-powered frame that let a single worker spin eight cotton threads at once — and, in later versions, far more. It was among the first of the great textile inventions of the Industrial Revolution.
Why it matters
By multiplying the output of a single spinner, the jenny helped break the age-old bottleneck between spinning and weaving and began the mechanization of cloth-making.