Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

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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threads, which, when added to the loom, superseded the services of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