William Lee

William Lee was an English inventor and alleged clergyman who lived from 1563 to 1614 and who invented the stocking frame knitting machine. Framework knitting, the name given to the use of Lee's machine in stocking production, was the first major stage in the mechanisation of the textile industry, a process that two hundred years later precipitated the Industrial Revolution. His machine therefore stands near the beginning of textile engineering as a mechanical industry, and it is the invention for which he is remembered in the history of technology.