John Kay

John Kay invented the flying shuttle, which doubled the output of a hand weaver and began the sequence of bottlenecks that produced the industrial revolution, and he died poor in France. He was a Lancashire clockmaker's son and a reed maker, and his patent of 1733 was for a shuttle driven across the loom by cords and a picking peg rather than thrown by hand. A single weaver could now weave a broad cloth alone, and weave it faster. The consequence was that spinners could not keep up: it took several spinners to supply one weaver before, and now far more, and the shortage of yarn is the direct reason for the spinning jenny, the water frame and the mule that followed within forty years. Kay got almost nothing from it. Weavers formed associations to resist paying royalties, manufacturers used the device and refused to pay, and he spent his money on infringement suits he could not afford to win. His house at Bury was attacked by a mob in 1753. He moved to France, where the government gave him a small pension and he tried and failed to sell the invention again, and he died there about 1779 in obscure circumstances. He is not the John Kay who worked with Richard Arkwright on the water frame thirty years later, a confusion that appears in older accounts. Bury has a monument to him. His son Robert invented the drop box, which allowed a loom to use shuttles of different colours. The flying shuttle was in general use in Lancashire by the 1760s, by which time the patent had long expired. No portrait of him made from life is securely identified.

• Lived: 1704 CE – 1779 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: inventor