Richard Arkwright

Richard Arkwright built the first successful water-powered cotton mill and with it the factory system, and died the richest commoner in England. He was the youngest of thirteen children of a Preston tailor, worked as a barber and wigmaker, and made his first money from a waterproof dye for hair. The water frame he patented in 1769 spun a thread strong enough to be used as warp, which the spinning jenny could not manage, so cotton cloth could be made without linen; how much of the machine was his and how much came from the clockmaker John Kay and from Thomas Highs was disputed at the time and his patents were overturned in 1785. The important innovation was arguably organisational rather than mechanical. Cromford mill, opened in 1771 on the Derwent, ran day and night in two twelve-hour shifts, employed several hundred people, most of them women and children, and imposed timekeeping, discipline and fines on a workforce that had previously spun at home at its own pace. He built housing, a market and a chapel at Cromford to hold the labour force in a thinly populated valley. The model was copied across the north, and Samuel Slater carried it to Rhode Island in 1789 by memorising the machinery and leaving Britain in disguise, since exporting the plans was illegal. Arkwright was knighted in 1786 and left a fortune of about half a million pounds. The Derwent Valley Mills are now a World Heritage site on the grounds that the factory as an institution began there. He was also thoroughly disliked by his competitors, who called him a barber who had stolen his way into the trade.

• Lived: 1732 CE – 1792 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: inventor