John Kay invented the flying shuttle, an innovation that doubled production in loom-weaving while also raising the quality and consistency of the cloth. Known in some history books as "Kay of Bury" to distinguish him from the clockmaker who assisted Sir Richard Arkwright in investing the spinning frame, he was never appreciated for his invention: workers, whose livelihoods were threatened, ransacked his house; manufacturers similarly abused him, refusing to pay royalties for the use of his patented invention. Ironically, Kay died in relative obscurity in France, while his invention was one of the key elements that advanced the Industrial Revolution by mechanizing the production process.
Kay was born on July 16, 1704, at Park Walmersley, near Bury, in Lancashire, England. He was the 12th child born to a woolen manufacturer. Little is known of his youth; it is believed that he received his education on tour throughout Europe—some accounts specify France. When he returned from his travels, his father tried to install him as overseer of one of the family’s woolen factories. While Kay may have filled this position, he reportedly preferred to work on his own, producing reeds (resembling combs) for looms, which maintained even spacing between yarn strands in the cloth manufactured.
Kay continued to focus his attention on the textile production process, searching for ways to improve the tools and procedures of the trade. For example, he filed English patent number 515 for his invention of an engine that manufactured and stored woolen thread. Another invention consisted of a machine that thrashed wool cloth to remove dust mites. He also developed other improvements in the dressing, batting, and carding machinery involved in textile manufacturing.
Growing up in Lancashire, the heart of textile country, and managing his father’s woolen mill, Kay became intimately familiar with all the aspects of the manufacturing process. His incisive mind also identified inefficiencies in production techniques, of which there were many in the preindustrial era, when demand was increasing but the supply was still produced by traditional methods. The weft shuttle was one such glaring inefficiency.
Loom weaving necessitates the passing of a shuttle back and forth to create the weft, or the cross-weaving of threads that run perpendicular to the warp threads. The existing timeworn method required the weaver to pass the shuttle from one side of the loom to the other—from one hand to the other. The weaving of broader cloth required mill owners to employ two separate workers to do nothing other than throw the shuttle back and forth between each other. Clearly, Kay perceived, there had to be a better way.
Kay set about to devise an improved method for shuttling the weft. On May 26, 1733, he received English patent number 542 for a "New Engine or Machine for Opening and Dressing Wool"—his flying shuttle. Kay carved a groove in a lathe beneath the weaving area of the loom, then mounted the shuttle on wheels that raced along this track back and forth between two shuttle boxes on each end of the loom. Kay called this wooden guide the "race-board," which allowed for the extension of the loom’s width by a foot on either side. He attached cords to a "picking peg," which operated the shuttle boxes—the lone weaver held the cords in one hand, and with a flick of the wrist, he activated the "throwing" of the shuttle from one side to the other, and then back again with another flick.
Kay’s ingenious invention significantly increased the efficiency of the looming process, doubling the amount of cloth produced while also improving the quality and consistency of the weave. However, this innovation created trouble for him on both sides of the production process. Producers joined forces to form the "Shuttle Club," a coalition dedicated to the use of the flying shuttle without paying royalties to Kay, as he was due by law. Kay bankrupted himself by mounting legal battles to protect his patent, as the factory owners essentially bribed the legal system in their favor.
On the other end of production, Kay’s invention enraged textile workers, who feared for the security of their jobs. The prospect that their labor could be replaced by mechanization understandably scared them, and they responded by forming a mob in 1752 or 1753 to ransack Kay’s house in Bury. He supposedly hid under wool and then fled to Manchester.
Such antipathy from the workers and exploitation by the manufacturers caused Kay to withhold other inventions. For example, he invented a machine-run loom with Joseph Stell of Keighley, the first "power loom," but he did not market it commercially. In fact, the discouraged Kay left the country for France, where he spent the rest of his days in poverty, desperately trying to sell his innovations. He died in 1764 (or 1780 according to some sources). His son,
Robert Kay, continued his legacy by inventing the drop-box, essentially a refinement of the flying shuttle, which allowed the weaver to choose between three differently colored shuttles, to create design variety in the weft.
