John Kay (spinning frame)

John Kay was a clockmaker from Warrington, Lancashire, England, associated with the scandal surrounding invention of the spinning frame in 1767, an important stage in the development of textile manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution. Kay constructed the first known frame, and is one of the claimants to having been its inventor. He is sometimes confused with the unrelated John Kay who had invented the flying shuttle thirty years earlier.

In 1763, Kay was a married clockmaker in Leigh. His neighbour, Thomas Highs, was an inventor, and the two collaborated in textile-machinery experiments. Exactly what technologies, and contributions the two men worked on then became the subject of several controversial court cases, but among other things, Kay and Highs probably investigated textile-spinning by means of rollers.

(By 1763 weaving had been greatly automated, but spinning was still done by hand wheel. Research into using mechanical rollers to replace hand spinning had started in the first half of the century; Lewis Paul had the first model in 1738, but further development was needed to make it profitable.)

Though they made many trial machines, these three years of research were limited by their lack of capital, and they were unable to perfect any designs.

In 1767, Richard Arkwright (wig-dealer and entrepreneur) engaged Kay's clockmaking skills in the construction of brass wheels (ostensibly for a "perpetual motion machine"). Six months later, after Kay had moved back to Warrington, Arkwright persuaded him to make a roller-based spinning-machine. Kay built a model machine for Arkwright in 1767 which became the fore-runner of the useful technology.

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