Coal may have powered the engines of the industrial revolution, but it was profits from cotton that paid for them. In fact, cotton thread production soared so rapidly in the 18th century that cloth weavers were working their fingers to the bone simply trying to keep up.

Enter Mr Cartwright. When he popped into Richard Arkwright's cotton spinning factory for a tour, he decided to find a solution. His answer was the mechanically-powered weaving machine. In 1785, he patented the Cartwright power loom. However his first effort was pretty feeble and didn't have enough power. By 1788, he had improved the design and even built his own weaving mill to put his new machines to work.

The improved Cartwright power loom had a number of crucial features that promised to increase the output of cloth, and boost mill owner's profits - including a device to stop the loom automatically should the thread snap, and a means to roll the cloth off the machine once weaving had finished.

Despite these advantages, the power loom wasn't an overnight success. In 1799, a firm in Manchester installed 400 of Cartwright's power looms in a mill with a steam engine to drive them. However, when the workers found out, they ran riot, worried that the new machines would put them out of work. They burned the mill down, and other cloth manufacturers were too scared to try the new machines for themselves.

In fact Cartwright's loom didn't achieve its potential until about 25 years after he had invented it. Improvements to his design by other engineers meant that by the middle of the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Cartwright looms were clattering away across England. And chances are, right now you are wearing something made on a direct descendant of Cartwright's loom.