Arnold Wilkinson

Arnold Wilkinson

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/125949355/arnold-wilkinson

Holder of U.S. Patent #14.

"Arnold Wilkinson, Providence, Rhode Island, August 31, polishing iron and brass wire for weavers' reeds. [This included the use of steam power in place of the tedious hand process, of preparing wire for reeds, by the successor of Jeptha Avery Wilkinson, the inventor of the reed-making machine, and who made other improvements in the business still carried on by Mr. Frederick Miller.]"

• Source - A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860: Exhibiting the Origin and Growth of the Principal Mechanic Arts and Manufactures, from the Earliest Colonial Period to the Adoption of the Constitution and Comprising Annals of the Industry of the United States in Machinery, Manufactures and Useful Arts, with a Notice of the Important Inventions, Tariffs, and the Results of Each Decennial Census, Volume 2, page 406.

"In 1823 the inventor (Jeptha Avery Wilkinson) returned to this country and established a manufactury of Reeds in Providence, and in the same year, disposed of this establishment and the machine to his brother, Arnold Wilkinson. So perfect was this machine in its original conception that few material improvements, except those made by Arnold Wilkinson, such as setting different lengths of dents, giving different breaths of reeds, have been demanded or attempted since."

• Source - A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860: Exhibiting the Origin and Growth of the Principal Mechanic Arts and Manufactures, from the Earliest Colonial Period to the Adoption of the Constitution and Comprising Annals of the Industry of the United States in Machinery, Manufactures and Useful Arts, with a Notice of the Important Inventions, Tariffs, and the Results of Each Decennial Census, Volume 2, page 717.

"He was advised by his friends who had witnessed the operation of his invention, to go to England where reeds were mere in use at that time and in greater demand than in this country. He, however, erected an establishment in Providence, Rhode Island, and left it in charge of his brother Arnold Wilkinson, and then went to England, and made an exhibition of his machine at Manchester."

• Source - https://archive.org/stream/memoirsofwilkins00wilk/memoirsofwilkins0...