1753-1827

English Inventor

The tale of Samuel Crompton is one of those unpleasant stories of an unschooled inventor who fails to protect the rights to his creation, and therefore dies in poverty. In Crompton's case, the invention was the spinning mule, which combined aspects of earlier devices to create a machine that would spin strong, smooth yarn efficiently. The spinning mule remained in use throughout the industrialized world for nearly two centuries, but because he never secured a proper patent for it, Crompton's benefits from his invention were modest.

Crompton was born in Hall-in-the-Wood, a village near Bolton, England, in 1753. His father died when he was five, and this forced his mother to take care of the family. Among her many tasks was her work with a spinning jenny, a then-recent invention of Englishman James Hargreaves (?-1778) for spinning yarn. But there was a problem with...