when did fruit of the loom come out
Fruit of the Loom The Fruit of the Loom brand dates back to 1851 in Rhode Island[1][2] when Robert Knight, a textile mill owner, visited his friend, Rufus Skeel. Skeel owned a small shop in Providence that sold cloth from Knight's mill. Skeel's daughter painted images of apples and applied them to the bolts of cloth. The ones with the apple emblems proved most popular. Mr. Knight thought the labels would be the perfect symbol for his trade name, Fruit of the Loom – an expression referring to clothes, paralleling the phrase "fruit of the womb" meaning "children", which can be traced back to use in the Bible (Psalm 127:3).
Cotton mill The development of mills to mechanise the weaving process was more gradual partly because of the success of John Kay's 1733 invention of the flying shuttle, which increased the productivity of domestic hand loom weavers.[59] Kay took out a patent for the application of water power to a Dutch loom in 1745 and opened a weaving factory in Keighley in 1750, but nothing is known of its success.[59] A further attempt to mechanise the weaving process took place at Garrett Hall in Manchester in 1750 but was unsuccessful in enabling one worker to operate more than a single loom.[59] The first feasible power loom was patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785, although it was initially a primitive device it established the basic principle that would be used in powered weaving until the 20th century.[60] In 1788 Cartwright opened Revolution Mill in Doncaster which was powered by a Boulton and Watt steam engine and had 108 power looms on three floors as well as spinning machinery, but it was not a commercial success and closed in 1790.[61] A second mill using Cartwright's machinery, opened in Manchester in 1790 but was burned to the ground by hand loom weavers within two years.[62] By 1803 there were only 2,400 power looms operating in Britain.[63]