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(23 December
1732 – 3 August 1792) was an Englishman credited with the spinning frame
— later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power.
The spinning frame — a quantum-leap forward from the spinning jenny of James
Hargreaves — was developed in 1769, and the world's first water-powered
cotton mill was built in 1771 at Cromford, Derbyshire, (now one of the Derwent
Valley Mills) creating one of the catalysts for the Industrial Revolution.
He was knighted in 1786. He was born in 1732 in Preston in the county of Lancashire, England and was the 13th and the youngest child of Thomas Arkwright (a barber) and Ellen Hodgkinson. He worked as a barber until he was twenty-eight years old, he then became a dealer in |
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