Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/394

 made a bencher of his inn, master of the library 1865, reader 1866, and had he lived would have succeeded to the office of treasurer. In 1852 he was created a Q.C. He was always much interested in the subject of a registry of indefeasible title. He approved of Torrens's registry of titles as carried out in South Australia, and when in 1844 Torrens, aided by a committee, formed a plan for establishing a registry of Irish titles, he wrote a lengthy criticism of the scheme in the form of a letter to H. D. Hutton, the secretary of the committee. He was then directed by the government to draw a bill for carrying out this object, and on 10 Aug. 1866, the Record of Title Act being established by 29 and 30 Vict. cap. xcix., he arranged to take charge of the judicial business arising out of this new jurisdiction, but was prevented by his last illness. His mathematical essays were numerous. One of the earliest, ‘On the Solution of Linear Differential Equations’ (‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1848, pp. 31–54), obtained the gold medal of the Royal Society, and on 18 April 1844 he was elected a F.R.S. Other papers were: ‘General Methods in Analyses for the Resolution of Linear Equations in Finite Differences’ (ib. 1850, pp. 261–86); ‘On the Problem of Three Bodies’ (‘ Proceedings of the Royal Society,’ 1857–9, pp. 265–73); ‘Analytical Researches concerning Numbers’ (‘London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine,’ 1849, xxxv. 36–53); ‘On the Valuation of Life Contingencies’ (ib. 1853, v. 39–45); ‘Applications of the Calculus of Operations to Algebraical Expansions and Theorems’ (ib. 1853, vi. 351–63); ‘On the Law of Prime Numbers’ (ib. 1854, viii. 14–22); ‘Differential Equations of the First Order’ (ib. 1864, xxvii. 355–76). The honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the university of Dublin in 1852. In 1866 his attention was again drawn to a new method of solving algebraic equations, and he commenced an essay on this question. Want of rest brought on an exhaustion of the brain, from which he died at Bray, near Dublin, 23 April 1866. He married, 3 Sept. 1856, Sarah Hannah, eldest daughter of Thomas Noble of Leeds.

 HARGREAVES, JAMES (d. 1778), inventor of the spinning-jenny, was probably a native of Blackburn. Between 1740 and 1750 he seems to have been a carpenter and handloom weaver at Standhill, near that town. About 1760 his skill led to his employment by Robert Peel of Blackburn (grandfather of the statesman) to construct an improved carding-machine. He is supposed to have invented the spinning-jenny about 1764, and to have first thought of it from observing an ordinary spinning-wheel overturned on the ground, when both the wheel and the spindle continued to revolve. The spindle having thus exchanged a horizontal for an upright position, it seems to have occurred to him that if a number of spindles were placed upright and side by side several threads might be spun at once. In any case he contrived a machine on one part of w r hich he placed eight rovings in a row, and in another part a row of eight spindles. A description of the machine with a drawing of its first form is given in Baines (pp. 157-8). The spinningjenny (so called for unknown reasons) has been described as ' the instrument by which (so far as we have any authentic and trustworthy evidence) the human individual was first enabled, for any permanently advantageous and profitable purpose, to spin. . . wool, cotton, or flax, into a plurality of threads at the same time and by one operation '. The spinning-jenny was invented at a time when it was urgently needed. The fly-shuttle, invented by John Kay [q. v.], and supposed to have first come into general use in the cotton manufacture about 1760, had doubled the productive power of the weaver, while that of the worker on the spinning-wheel remained much the same. The spinning-jenny at once multiplied eightfold the productive power of the spinner, and from its form could be worked much more easily by children than by adults. It did not, however, entirely supersede the spinning-wheel, on which, in the cotton manufacture at least, the rovings which the jenny converted into yarn had still to be spun; but in the woollen manufacture the jenny was used for production both of warp and weft long after it had been superseded in the cotton manufacture by Crompton's mule, of which it was one of the parents [see ]. At first the jenny was worked solely by Hargreaves and his children to make weft for his own loom. But to supply the wants of a large family he sold some of the new machines. The spinners on the old-fashioned wheel became alarmed, and in the spring of 1768 a mob from Blackburn and the neighbourhood gutted Hargreaves's house and destroyed his jenny and his loom (see, pp. 205-6). Hargreaves migrated to Nottingham and formed a partnership with a Mr. James, who built a small cotton-mill in which the jenny was utilised. It was doubt-