Woman Working a Spinning JennyThe loose cotton strands on the slanted bobbins shown in this illustration of Hargreaves’s spinning jenny passed up to the sliding carriage and then on to the spindles (inset) in back for fine spinning. The worker, almost always a woman, regulated the sliding carriage with one hand, and with the other she turned the crank on the wheel to supply power. By 1783, one woman could spin by hand a hundred threads at a time. (spinning jenny: Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works)