Cartwright, Edmund (1743–1823)

English inventor. He patented the power loom (1785), built a weaving mill (1787), and patented a wool-combing machine (1789).

Cartwright was born in Nottinghamshire and studied at Oxford. He became rector of Goadby Marwood, Leicestershire 1779 and was prebendary of Lincoln from 1786. He set up a factory in Doncaster, Yorkshire, for weaving and spinning, went bankrupt in 1793, but was awarded £10,000 by the government in 1809.

Sources differ but some suggest that visiting the spinning mills of manufacturing pioneer Richard Arkwright inspired Cartwright to try to invent a weaving mill. He patented his first, power loom in 1785, and gradually improved it. It was followed by the wool-combing machine, which did the work of 20 hand-combers. The wool-combers – some 50,000 in number – organized a protest, but nothing came of it.

Cartwright's Doncaster factory was enlarged when a steam engine was erected to power it, and in 1799 a Manchester firm contracted with Cartwright for the use of 400 of his power looms and built a mill where some of these were powered by steam. The Manchester mill was burned to the ground, probably by workers who feared to lose their jobs, and this prevented other manufacturers from repeating the experiment.