Samuel Crompton

Samuel Crompton was an English inventor and pioneer of the spinning industry, born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1753. Building on the work of James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright, he invented the spinning mule, a machine that revolutionised the industry worldwide. After his father died he helped support the family by spinning yarn, learning on Hargreaves's spinning jenny, and the deficiencies of the jenny led him to work in secret for five or six years on something better. About 1779 he produced the mule-jenny, which spun yarn fine enough for muslin. He lacked the means to take out a patent and had to make the machine public, and he died in 1827.