THE LOOM SUPERSEDING THE NEEDLE.
Belfast, 1st September 1856. Sin—Your correspondent Mr. Bridges Adams does not seem aware that the loom has already begun to supersede the needle.
It is easy, by means of a proper arrangement of the healds of a loom and the mechanism that works them, to weave a web that shall be single in i
some parts either of its length or its breadth, and double in others.
If a web is single at its sides and double along its middle, it presents a tube. If the tube is interrupted at regular intervals by making the web single all the way across, it is changed into a series of closed sacks, which may be cut asunder, and each closed sack cut in two, so as to make two open ones. Bags are woven on this principle, and so, I believes are hose for fire- engines : and the same principle is applied to the weaving of corsets, the web being alternately single and double. The embroidery.-loom., an ingenious application of the Jacquard or da- mask-loom principle, ms another move m the same direction. I cannot agree with Mr. Adams that the use of embroidery will ever be discontinued. I think it more probable that it will be hereafter performed either by the loom in the act of weaving, as in the machine I had just mentioned, or else by some such machine, as Houldsworth's embroiderer ; in which one hand, I believe, works many needles.
I understand that the Nottingham people are succeeding to some extent in making completed articles of dress by itmehinery.
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