Power Loom

A power loom is a mechanized loom that automates the weaving of cloth using mechanical power rather than manual effort, interlacing warp and weft threads through cams, gears, levers and pulleys, and it dramatically increased the speed and scale of textile production during the Industrial Revolution. The English clergyman Edmund Cartwright is credited with beginning its development, patenting a design in 1785 that was initially crude and required a hand crank; by 1787 he had built improved versions powered first by water and then by steam, and although Cartwright's own machines were not commercially successful because they had to be stopped to dress the warp, later inventors refined his design over the following decades until power looms became reliable and were widely adopted across Europe and North America by the early 19th century, sharply reducing demand for skilled hand weavers.