Self Help - Samuel Smiles (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗
- Author: Samuel Smiles
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His parents dying, Jacquard found himself in a measure compelled to
take to his father’s two looms, and carry on the trade of a weaver.
He immediately proceeded to improve the looms, and became so
engrossed with his inventions that he forgot his work, and very
soon found himself at the end of his means. He then sold the looms
to pay his debts, at the same time that he took upon himself the
burden of supporting a wife. He became still poorer, and to
satisfy his creditors, he next sold his cottage. He tried to find
employment, but in vain, people believing him to be an idler,
occupied with mere dreams about his inventions. At length he
obtained employment with a line-maker of Bresse, whither he went,
his wife remaining at Lyons, earning a precarious living by making
straw bonnets.
We hear nothing further of Jacquard for some years, but in the
interval he seems to have prosecuted his improvement in the
drawloom for the better manufacture of figured fabrics; for, in
1790, he brought out his contrivance for selecting the warp
threads, which, when added to the loom, superseded the services of
a drawboy. The adoption of this machine was slow but steady, and
in ten years after its introduction, 4000 of them were found at
work in Lyons. Jacquard’s pursuits were rudely interrupted by the
Revolution, and, in 1792, we find him fighting in the ranks of the
Lyonnaise Volunteers against the Army of the Convention under the
command of Dubois Crance. The city was taken; Jacquard fled and
joined the Army of the Rhine, where he rose to the rank of
sergeant. He might have remained a soldier, but that, his only son
having been shot dead at his side, he deserted and returned to
Lyons to recover his wife. He found her in a garret still employed
at her old trade of straw-bonnet making. While living in
concealment with her, his mind reverted to the inventions over
which he had so long brooded in former years; but he had no means
wherewith to prosecute them. Jacquard found it necessary, however,
to emerge from his hiding-place and try to find some employment.
He succeeded in obtaining it with an intelligent manufacturer, and
while working by day he went on inventing by night. It had
occurred to him that great improvements might still be introduced
in looms for figured goods, and he incidentally mentioned the
subject one day to his master, regretting at the same time that his
limited means prevented him from carrying out his ideas. Happily
his master appreciated the value of the suggestions, and with
laudable generosity placed a sum of money at his disposal, that he
might prosecute the proposed improvements at his leisure.
In three months Jacquard had invented a loom to substitute
mechanical action for the irksome and toilsome labour of the
workman. The loom was exhibited at the Exposition of National
Industry at Paris in 1801, and obtained a bronze medal. Jacquard
was further honoured by a visit at Lyons from the Minister Carnot,
who desired to congratulate him in person on the success of his
invention. In the following year the Society of Arts in London
offered a prize for the invention of a machine for manufacturing
fishing-nets and boarding-netting for ships. Jacquard heard of
this, and while walking one day in the fields according to his
custom, he turned the subject over in his mind, and contrived the
plan of a machine for the purpose. His friend, the manufacturer,
again furnished him with the means of carrying out his idea, and in
three weeks Jacquard had completed his invention.
Jacquard’s achievement having come to the knowledge of the Prefect
of the Department, he was summoned before that functionary, and, on
his explanation of the working of the machine, a report on the
subject was forwarded to the Emperor. The inventor was forthwith
summoned to Paris with his machine, and brought into the presence
of the Emperor, who received him with the consideration due to his
genius. The interview lasted two hours, during which Jacquard,
placed at his ease by the Emperor’s affability, explained to him
the improvements which he proposed to make in the looms for weaving
figured goods. The result was, that he was provided with
apartments in the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, where he had
the use of the workshop during his stay, and was provided with a
suitable allowance for his maintenance.
Installed in the Conservatoire, Jacquard proceeded to complete the
details of his improved loom. He had the advantage of minutely
inspecting the various exquisite pieces of mechanism contained in
that great treasury of human ingenuity. Among the machines which
more particularly attracted his attention, and eventually set him
upon the track of his discovery, was a loom for weaving flowered
silk, made by Vaucanson the celebrated automaton-maker.
Vaucanson was a man of the highest order of constructive genius.
The inventive faculty was so strong in him that it may almost be
said to have amounted to a passion, and could not be restrained.
The saying that the poet is born, not made, applies with equal
force to the inventor, who, though indebted, like the other, to
culture and improved opportunities, nevertheless contrives and
constructs new combinations of machinery mainly to gratify his own
instinct. This was peculiarly the case with Vaucanson; for his
most elaborate works were not so much distinguished for their
utility as for the curious ingenuity which they displayed. While a
mere boy attending Sunday conversations with his mother, he amused
himself by watching, through the chinks of a partition wall, part
of the movements of a clock in the adjoining apartment. He
endeavoured to understand them, and by brooding over the subject,
after several months he discovered the principle of the escapement.
From that time the subject of mechanical invention took complete
possession of him. With some rude tools which he contrived, he
made a wooden clock that marked the hours with remarkable
exactness; while he made for a miniature chapel the figures of some
angels which waved their wings, and some priests that made several
ecclesiastical movements. With the view of executing some other
automata he had designed, he proceeded to study anatomy, music, and
mechanics, which occupied him for several years. The sight of the
Flute-player in the Gardens of the Tuileries inspired him with the
resolution to invent a similar figure that should PLAY; and after
several years’ study and labour, though struggling with illness, he
succeeded in accomplishing his object. He next produced a
Flageolet-player, which was succeeded by a Duck—the most ingenious
of his contrivances,—which swam, dabbled, drank, and quacked like
a real duck. He next invented an asp, employed in the tragedy of
‘Cleopatre,’ which hissed and darted at the bosom of the actress.
Vaucanson, however, did not confine himself merely to the making of
automata. By reason of his ingenuity, Cardinal de Fleury appointed
him inspector of the silk manufactories of France; and he was no
sooner in office, than with his usual irrepressible instinct to
invent, he proceeded to introduce improvements in silk machinery.
One of these was his mill for thrown silk, which so excited the
anger of the Lyons operatives, who feared the loss of employment
through its means, that they pelted him with stones and had nearly
killed him. He nevertheless went on inventing, and next produced a
machine for weaving flowered silks, with a contrivance for giving a
dressing to the thread, so as to render that of each bobbin or
skein of an equal thickness.
When Vaucanson died in 1782, after a long illness, he bequeathed
his collection of machines to the Queen, who seems to have set but
small value on them, and they were shortly after dispersed. But
his machine for weaving flowered silks was happily preserved in the
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and there Jacquard found it
among the many curious and interesting articles in the collection.
It proved of the utmost value to him, for it immediately set him on
the track of the principal modification which he introduced in his
improved loom.
One of the chief features of Vaucanson’s machine was a pierced
cylinder which, according to the holes it presented when revolved,
regulated the movement of certain needles, and caused the threads
of the warp to deviate in such a manner as to produce a given
design, though only of a simple character. Jacquard seized upon
the suggestion with avidity, and, with the genius of the true
inventor, at once proceeded to improve upon it. At the end of a
month his weaving-machine was completed. To the cylinder of
Vancanson, he added an endless piece of pasteboard pierced with a
number of holes, through which the threads of the warp were
presented to the weaver; while another piece of mechanism indicated
to the workman the colour of the shuttle which he ought to throw.
Thus the drawboy and the reader of designs were both at once
superseded. The first use Jacquard made of his new loom was to
weave with it several yards of rich stuff which he presented to the
Empress Josephine. Napoleon was highly gratified with the result
of the inventor’s labours, and ordered a number of the looms to be
constructed by the best workmen, after Jacquard’s model, and
presented to him; after which he returned to Lyons.
There he experienced the frequent fate of inventors. He was
regarded by his townsmen as an enemy, and treated by them as Kay,
Hargreaves, and Arkwright had been in Lancashire. The workmen
looked upon the new loom as fatal to their trade, and feared lest
it should at once take the bread from their mouths. A tumultuous
meeting was held on the Place des Terreaux, when it was determined
to destroy the machines. This was however prevented by the
military. But Jacquard was denounced and hanged in effigy. The
‘Conseil des prud’hommes’ in vain endeavoured to allay the
excitement, and they were themselves denounced. At length, carried
away by the popular impulse, the prud’hommes, most of whom had been
workmen and sympathized with the class, had one of Jacquard’s looms
carried off and publicly broken in pieces. Riots followed, in one
of which Jacquard was dragged along the quay by an infuriated mob
intending to drown him, but he was rescued.
The great value of the Jacquard loom, however, could not be denied,
and its success was only a question of time. Jacquard was urged by
some English silk manufacturers to pass over into England and
settle there. But notwithstanding the harsh and cruel treatment he
had received at the hands of his townspeople, his patriotism was
too strong to permit him to accept their offer. The English
manufacturers, however, adopted his loom. Then it was, and only
then, that Lyons, threatened to be beaten out of the field, adopted
it with eagerness; and before long the Jacquard machine was
employed in nearly all kinds of weaving. The result proved that
the fears of the workpeople had been entirely unfounded. Instead
of diminishing employment, the Jacquard loom increased it at least
tenfold. The number of persons occupied in the manufacture of
figured goods in Lyons, was stated by M. Leon Faucher to have been
60,000 in 1833; and that number has since been considerably
increased.
As for Jacquard himself, the rest of his life passed peacefully,
excepting that the workpeople who dragged him along the quay to
drown him were shortly after found eager to bear him in triumph
along the same route in celebration of his birthday. But his
modesty would not permit him to take part in such a demonstration.
The Municipal Council of Lyons proposed to him that he should
devote himself to improving his machine for the benefit of the
local industry, to which Jacquard agreed in consideration of
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