Located next to the Black Stone river in Pawtucket the museum we visited has a collection of old machinery, these machinery symbolized the beginning of the mass production.
One of the building of the museum is dedicated to textile machinery. The production in Pawtucket was predominantly cotton textile.
Carding process
The process of carding helps to align the fibres in order to be processed.
The picture shows how before the invention of the machine the process was done. This process was done mostly by women, a small amount of cotton fibre were placed on a brush and the other brush was pulled through the fibres.
The invention of the carding machine allowed to speed up the process. The machine includes a cylinder carding engine. All the surface of the wheel is covered by brushes. The upper part of the machine is composed by other removable brushes. The rotatory motion of the wheel cause the rubbing of the brushes and the alignment of the fibres.
I consider his machine interesting because it can be used also for other type of fibres like wool, the alignment of the wool fibres is the first step of felting.
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