A Pioneering Silk Mill In the 1600s Italians invented a machine to spin the thread for the silk that rich people loved. Their carefully guarded secret was stolen in 1717 by John Lombe, who then built this enormous silk mill in England. But the factory production of textiles only took off when the spinning of cotton — a fabric for all classes — was mechanized in the late eighteenth century. (The Bridgeman Art Library Ltd./Alamy)