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Description: | The Leicester Knitwear Industry Collection is a nationally important, multidisciplinary collection, reflecting LeicesterÃ's crucial role in this trade. Leicester was at the cheaper and more popular end of the market for knitwear and developed significant overseas markets, especially in British overseas colonies. The first knitting frame was introduced at the end of the 17th Century and much of the hosiery industry was organised on a domestic basis even after the first factories were built in the 1860s. Much of LeicesterÃ's wider and later development was underpinned by the hosiery industry. From textile mechanics (not forgetting their forebears blacksmiths, turret clockmakers, framesmiths) came engineering, including manufacture of machinery for the boot and shoe industry. Hosiers were prominent in political reform in the 1830s and 1840s and thereafter played a prominent part in local politics and local institutions. In all, the collection gives a remarkable picture of all aspects of the hosiery trade and its impact on Leicester and the World from the late 18th Century to the present.
The extensive collection of domestic hand frames includes the only known example of an 18th century Saxony frame in the country, donated by John Biggs MP in 1849, leading hosiery manufacturer, and three times mayor of Leicester. Mechanised hosiery production, which developed during the early- to mid-19th Century, is represented by many ÃfirstsÃ' and early machines. These include the first successful circular knitting machine (1849) and an XL circular machine, which was the first machine to make a sock in one operation. Flat-bed machines are represented by a William Cotton patent machine of 1864 which was the first powered knitting machine to produce fashioned garments automatically and became the corner stone of the high class knitting industry. Also included is arguably the worldÃ's most important historic hosiery machine, Matthew TownsendÃ's 1849 latch-needle, flat-bed, hand-powered knitting machine. This revolutionised the industry by allowing manufacturers to produce a wider range of fancy goods and plain knit faster than the bearded needle which it replaced. There is a patent model of the Townsend latch-needle machine in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, but the Leicester example is a full-sized machine, dating from about 1860.
In a collection totalling over 200 machines, all the important machine makers of Leicester and Leicestershire as well as from Europe and the United States are represented, e.g. Moulton, Stibbe, Dubied, Mellor, Wildt, Bentley, Berridge, Riechel-Rothenthal and Griswold. Demonstrations on a working knitting frame take place as part of the regular events programme. Domestic knitting machines and important knitting machine needles are also in the collections. There are also fine working models of hand frames, including one presented to King George V and Queen Mary in 1914.
During the mid- to late-19th Century the mechanised boot and shoe industry began to grow in importance. Although Northampton is synonymous with the manufacture of footwear, Leicester was on equal terms in the mid-19th Century, especially for the cheaper end of the market. In the 1860s the Leicester manufacturers patented ÃLeicester weltingÃ', which was machine-applied steel staples for cheap mass-produced footwear. The headquarters of Stead & Simpson, Freeman, Hardy & Willis, TimpsonÃ's and Equity are still in Leicester.
Leicester, however, excelled in the production of boot and shoe machinery. The industry began in the 1850s with the manufacture of the ÃBlake Sewing machineÃ', the first successful attempt at mechanised shoe leather sewing. The collections include two examples of this now very rare machine. Throughout the late-19th Century the principal boot and shoe machine builders included Standard, Gimsons, Bennion and Pearson, all represented in the collection. In 1899/1900 Bennion established the British United Shoe Machine Company (BUSM), based on its American counterpart. BUSM soon became the only serious supplier of footwear machines for the country and by the 1930s over 90% of the countryÃ's footwear was made on machinery produced in Leicester. Many of their key machines, such as the consolidating last, are represented in the collection, together with an extensive library of BUSM trade literature.
Engineering developed as a major industry in Leicester during the 19th Century. Local companies such as Jones & Shipman, Pollard, DeÃ'arth, Ellwood and Wadkins, all represented in the collection, produced machine tools for other companies around the country. In this area Wadkins is outstanding, supplying machine tools to the woodworking industries of Britain since 1899. Examples in the collection range from mortiser machines to band and circular saws as well as more specialised machines for veneering and log frame sawing.
Abbey Pumping Station houses four Woolf compound beam engines which are the largest working examples in the country of their type. Integral to the Pumping Station, the engines were built by Gimson & Co. of Leicester in 1891 and pumped 208,000 gallons of sewage every hour to the treatment works at Beaumont Leys, over a mile away and at a height of 160 ft.
The collection has other unique and important stationary and mobile steam engines. Stationary engines include an early ÃAÃ' frame rotating beam engine built in 1826, a unique Gimson & Co. wall-mounted Ãspoon engineÃ', the only surviving example of an 1870s, Leicester-built, Jessop & Appleby twin cylinder colliery winding engine, two Burton-on-Trent-built horizontal engines, a vertical engine original to the Pumping Station site and a steam-powered vacuum engine.
From the late-19th Century new precision industries were locating in Leicester, such as instrument making, optical industries and typewriter manufacture. The collections contain significant artefacts relating to these industries.
The cinematograph collection contains projectors and associated equipment dating from the late-19th Century, including rare artefacts made by the Imperial Projector Company of Leicester. The pre-eminent material is the nationally important Rank Taylor Hobson collection of optical machine tools, optical equipment and lenses. The company was founded by William and Thomas Taylor and William Hobson in London, moved to Leicester in 1885 and in 1886 formed Taylor, Taylor Hobson Company. In the mid-20th Century, due to their outstanding contribution to cinematographic lenses and cameras, the company was acquired by J. Arthur Rank and became known as Rank Taylor Hobson.
The collection contains over 600 lenses, representing rare artefacts and a typological reference collection of lens design and the companyÃ's key developments. Their machine tool manufacture includes early lens grinding machines (their lenses were fitted to some of the finest cameras in the world, such as Leica, Reid, Kalee and Kershaws). In 1893 the company invented the Cooke Triplet lens, a wide aperture lens of outstanding quality used by Sir Ernest Shackleton to record his 1914 Antarctica Expedition. A number of these lenses are in the collection as well as ShackletonÃ's photographs.
Numerous other lenses were developed, including anumorphotic enlarging lenses, portrait lenses and wide screen cinematographic lenses. Rank Taylor Hobson lenses were used in Hollywood and in the 1980s a company designer, Gordon Cooke, won an Oscar for the companyÃ's contribution to cinematographic lens design with a high quality zoom lens. The collection of precision machine tools made by the company is also of outstanding importance. Taylor, Taylor Hobson patented the Talysurf (1946) and Talyrond (1950), the first practical machines accurately to measure to one millionth of an inch the roughness of a flat surface and the roundness of a sphere. Other breakthrough machines were made for lens grinding, lens edging and engraving.
The typewriter industry was established in Leicester in 1902 when Hidalgo Moya, an American, founded the Moya Typewriter Company, which became BritainÃ's leading manufacturer, the Imperial Typewriter Company, until its demise in 1974. The major part of the collection was donated by the Gould College in 1955 and the bulk of the Imperial Typewriter collection, which is the countryÃ's reference collection, was donated when the company closed its British Typewriter Museum. The collection spans the 1870s to the present and contains over 300 typewriters and related material, including all the model types produced by Imperial, as well as important, rare and unusual machines from the USA and Europe. The importance of the company and of the collection is referenced by authors and researchers who contact the museum for information. It is also an important resource to forensic science, which needs typeface and typewriter typologies.
Local and national significance | Subjects: | Footwear industry International trade Trade (practice) Sewing Hosiery Optical instruments Science Colonial countries Water supply Engineering Water treatment Knitting Industry | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | 0116 299 5125 | Telephone: | 0116 299 5111 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:5148 | Go to resource |
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