Circular Knitting Machine

A circular knitting machine knits a continuous tube of fabric by arranging its needles around a rotating cylinder rather than in the flat row a stocking frame or flatbed knitting machine uses, so the fabric grows outward in a spiral with no side seam. The French-born engineer Marc Isambard Brunel built the first circular knitting machine in 1816, mechanizing the production of knitted tubing, and the technology was transformed in the 1840s by the latch needle, patented by Matthew Townsend of Leicester, whose small hinged latch opens and closes the needle's hook automatically as it moves, replacing the older bearded needle that had to be pressed closed by a separate part of the machine. Latch-needle circular knitting machines became the standard means of producing seamless hosiery, underwear and later a wide range of knitted tubular fabric, and their basic mechanical principle, a rotating cylinder of independently latching needles, still underlies the industrial circular knitting machines used today.