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The son looked at the factory's carding machine - which helped turn fibres into yarn - and wondered if he could adapt it to roll cigarettes.

About the close of the 18th Century, Watt, Arkwright, Hargreave, Crompton, Cartwright, invented the steam engine, the spring frame, the jenny, the mule, the power loom, the carding machine and a hundred other minor inventions, and put it in the power of England to monopolize the markets of the world.

In a list of inventions, copyrights and patents, it appears that March 13, 1789, Hugh Templeton deposited in the office two plans, "a complete draft of a carding machine that will card eighty pounds of cotton per day", and "a complete draft of a spinning machine, with eighty-four spindles, that will spin with one man's attendance ten pounds of good cotton yarn per day."

In despair he cut up his spinning machines, and hacked to pieces with an axe a carding machine he had invented, exclaiming bitterly, "They shall not have this too."

The fibres are passed through a carding machine, emerging as a broad loose band; then sewn crosswise by rows of tiny stitches; the crosswise direction giving great strength to the finished cloth.