At the most elementary level making of textile involves a combination of spinning and weaving and thus transforming raw cotton into cloth. It was this simple activity that witnessed the first mechanical revolution and a complete transformation from fully manual to semi-automatic to fully automatic enterprise.

i.It all started with John Kay's 'flying shuttle' (1737) that threw the weaving shuttle more quickly than could be done by hand

ii.It was followed by James Hargreaves' 'spinning jenny' (1764-69) that mechanically reproduced the action of the hand-spinner.

iii.Then Richard Arkwright made the water frame in 1769 that mechanically produced superior quality of yarn using the flow of water as the energy.

iv.In 1785 came the power loom that applied mechanical power to weaving.’

As in other cases it was not one big technological innovation but a series of them that brought about this transformation from manual to automatic.

All these innovations led to superior yam being made much faster than before. Spinning and weaving thus got mechanized.

This meant that the raw cotton (procured from India and America) was being transformed into cloth at an extremely rapid rate. The immediate result was a big gap between the demand and supply of raw cotton. The supply of raw cotton was not able to keep pace with its demand.

The picking of cotton was still a manual activity and therefore slow. This problem too was solved in 1793 by the innovation of yet another device in America called 'cotton gin'. With the help of this device a man could pick three times more cotton than earlier

The developments in other fields followed the textile example. Not only was one invention quickly followed by another, but invention in one area (e.g. spinning) necessitated similar inventions in other areas (weaving, picking of cotton, growing of cotton). This created a certain chain of quick but fundamental changes, which continues even today.