Richard Arkwright
Arkwright invented the factory, without which modern life would be impossible.
1732-1792
King George III 1760-1820
Arkwright invented the factory, without which modern life would be impossible.
1732-1792
King George III 1760-1820
Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), the son of a Lancashire tailor, was knighted in 1786 in recognition of his role as one of the architects of the Industrial Revolution - not for the inventions once credited to him, but for developing the idea of factories.
SIR Richard Arkwright was a leading figure in the industrial revolution of the 18th century, whose textile machines and mills established the basis of the factory system.
Arkwright started out as a barber, but after the tragic loss of his first wife in 1755, he discovered a flair for business that brought him fame, fortune, and quite a few enemies. He found penniless inventors and invested in their ingenious machines for spinning cotton, which he then put to work in mills all over England and Scotland. Arkwright’s brazen attempt to patent these inventions as his own, in the hope of strangling competition at birth, was - fortunately - struck down by the courts.
But Arkwright’s real innovation was not any machine. It was the factory system itself. The small towns he built around his mills, for whole families drafted in from the surrounding countryside, were soon copied by others, changing British society, industry and economics forever.