Textilfabrik Cromford

The Textilfabrik Cromford in Ratingen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany was built in 1783 by Johann Gottfried Brügelmann. It was the first cotton spinning mill on the European mainland. Today it is an industrial museum specialising in textile history.

Brügelmann, came from a rich Elberfelder trading family. He heard of the Waterframes, an invention of Richard Arkwright in the Derbyshire village of Cromford, in the early 1770s – during a long stay in Basel. On his return to Wuppertal the cotton market was booming, it was impossible to fulfill the demand. Brügelmann recognised the potential that Arkwright's mechanising of the labour-intensive Spinning process offered. As a rule of thumb each weaver needed all the yarn that 10 hand-spinners could produce.

Richard Arkwright vigorously guarded his patent. He would not reveal how the water frame worked, keeping the details secret. Furthermore, the British Government saw this as a state secret that must not be allowed to leave the country..

Brügelmann obtained a model of the Waterframe in 1783. He had already worked unsuccessfully for six years with experts from Siegerland to discover the workings of an Arkwright Carding machine: this made the sliver that was needed for the waterframe. It is unclear whether he got a model of this too, family papers suggest that he smuggled a spinner from Cromford over to Germany, with a collection of the parts needed to reconstruct the carding engine. In a letter to Prince-Elector Karl Theodor of the Palatinate and Bavaria he wrote he had a friend in England who had sent him the parts needed. Though it is possible that he worded this letter carefully, not leaving himself open to charges of Industrial espionage.

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