Bobbinet Machine

A bobbinet machine mechanically produces bobbin net, a machine-made lace or net fabric with a regular hexagonal mesh that had previously been made only by hand on a pillow with bobbins, a slow and expensive craft. The English inventor John Heathcoat patented his bobbinet machine in 1808 after studying the hand lace-making techniques of Northamptonshire lacemakers and devising a mechanical way to reproduce their twisting motion; his improved 1809 machine, known as the Old Loughborough, established the working principle later bobbinet machines refined, and William Morley's 1824 circular machine became the industry standard. The machine works by carrying brass bobbins in combs that shift sideways in a fixed sequence while driver bars propel the bobbins so that weft yarn loops diagonally around the vertical warp yarns, forming the net's characteristic hexagonal mesh; Heathcoat's original mechanism proved so effective that later bobbinet machines changed remarkably little from his design, and the machine gave rise to the large-scale machine-made lace industry centered on Nottingham.