William Radcliffe (1761?, inMellor, Derbyshire – 20 May 1842, inStockport[1]) was a Britishinventor and author of the essayOrigin of the New System of Manufacture, Commonly Called Power Loom Weaving.
Radcliffe came from a modest family that had made the transition from farming to weaving. His father taught him aboutcarding andspinning. In 1785, he purchased several spinning machines that had been developed byJames Hargreaves. Hargreaves' machine, called thespinning jenny, was the first wholly successful improvement on the traditionalspinning wheel. Its advantage was to multiply many times the amount ofyarn that could be spun by a single operator. This development and others such as weavers being able to rely on uninterrupted supplies of yarn led to spinning being concentrated in factories.
In 1789, Radcliffe opened a large cotton weaving factory atMellor, inDerbyshire (now Greater Manchester). He streamlined the process by inventing a machine to improve the quality of cloth. In 1804 he invented aratchet wheel that moved the cloth forward automatically. Radcliffe also contributed to the debate amongst entrepreneurs on what constituted profits in acapitalist system. In a letter dated 1 May 1804, which was never sent but later published in an 1811 book calledLetters on the Evils of the Exportation of Cotton Yarns, Radcliffe said he regarded profit as being made up of two parts: interest on money and a sort of entrepreneurial wage.
In 1828, he wrote the essayOrigin of the New System of Manufacture, Commonly Called Power Loom Weaving, later reprinted inJ. F. C. Harrison'sSociety and Politics in England, 1780–1960 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965).
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