Sharon Hamilton, age 14, of Denton, Texas, for her question:
WHEN WAS THE FIRST LOOM USED:
A loom is a machine used in weaving fabrics from yarn. A woven fabric, as produced on a loom, is made by interlacing two or more sets of yarns, threads, fibers or other similar materials at right angles. The first hand loom dates from ancient times. Weaving was practiced by Chinese and Middle Eastern civilizations before the art came to Europe.
The basic principles of the loom remain the same today as they did in ancient times.
The longitudinal yarn used in a loom is called the warp. Longitudinal pertains to the direction of the length. The traverse yarn (or width) is called filling in the United States and weft in Britain and the Commonwealth countries.
As it was with the ancient loom, the modern loom is mounted on a frame that gives the necessary support to the moving parts. At the rear is a beam that holds the warp yarn, a cylinder mounted in sockets at each end of the frame so that it is free to revolve.
Each yarn on the beam is kept in constant tension by a pair of weighted ropes wound around the beam in such a way that the beam tends to move backward against the pull of the threads. From the beam the warp yarns run alternately over and under a pair of flat wooden rods called the lease rods. Their purpose is to keep the warp evenly spaced.
Each warp thread then passes through a small eye set in the middle of a vertical wire called a heddle. Groups of peddles are connected above and below to traverse strips of wood or metal so that the group, together with the warp threads passing through the heddle eyes, can be raised or lowered in a single operation.
The basic process of weaving consists of passing the filling yarn alternately over and under the warp yarn.
Five basic processes are involved in weaving. First is letting off. This holds the warp under tension and delivers the yarn at a constant rate as the weaving operation proceeds.
The second process is shedding, which is the raising and lowering of the warp yarns in certain varying sequences determined by the construction of the fabric.
The filling yarns pass in a shuttle through the shed formed by the upper and lower groups of warp yarns, this being the third procedure, known as picking.
The next procedure, called beating up, forces each row of filling against the previous row to create a compact fabric.
The fifth step, taking up, draws the complete fabric onto a roll.
The first move toward mechanization of the loom was the flying shuttle, patented by the British inventor John Kay in 1733. This consisted of a traverse batten, or sley, located under the warp threads. At each end of the slay was a box containing a lever mechanism for driving the shuttle across the loom with the sley acting as a track. This greatly increased the speed of weaving and permitting picking to be performed by one person.