A Chat With the MOSI

     The MOSI isn't a secret agent company, it is a Museum across the pond in England.  The day before yesterday, our class had the amazing opportunity to skype with Jaime and Darren, Museum Curators, to learn more about the textile industry in Great Britain.  Jaime and Darren are curators at The Museum of Science and Industry in England.  Before we could meet them though, we had to prepare ourselves.  The day before, our class went on the MOSI website and read about Richard Arkwright and some of Manchester’s Textile Designers.  We also watched a “prep” video that gave us a brief overview of the museum with Jaime explaining some significant terms.  We all made of list of the terminologies and defined them within groups after the video.  When we were searching the definitions for words, we had to be careful with the keywords we used in search bar because we wanted the definitions related to textiles.  Then within our groups, we prepared questions we wanted to ask Jaime and Darren.  A few of the questions I had are: What were some of the risks that families took when they worked in the mills and what was the maintenance of the machines like?  How long did they last?  The early prepping really helped us understand some of what Jaime talked about during the video chat. 

Shuttle

Speed Frame

     Jaime taught us a lot about the machines that were used and a lot more about the people who worked and the conditions that they worked in.  Jaime explained how the people worked constantly, “From sunrise to when it is too dark to keep working.”   The men usually operated the hand loom.  It was hand powered and created thread.  Men who usually worked the hand loom got arthritis.  In the old days, the loom was passed down from father to son.  Hence the name, heir loom.  The women operated the spinning wheel and the children would do the basic carding.  We saw a prototype of Arkwright’s water frame.  I was surprised to learn that Arkwright wasn't the actual inventor. He improved on other people's ideas but still got the recognition and money.  We also learned a lot about risks.  Many workers became deaf, had tuberculosis, and mouth, lung or throat cancer.  Disease spread like a wild fire in these mills because sanitation was really bad.  If women didn’t tie their hair back, it would be pulled back in clumps.  700 hundred bits of fiber entered the lung a day because the thread for the shuttle had to be put in the mouth before into a hole in the shuttle.  Children would have to clean the machines like the speed frame while it was running which lead to mangled hands and broken fingers.    

      I definitely learned a lot more from this video chat than I probably would have from a textbook.  It is hard to understand how the overall textile process is performed from reading a textbook, but it was very helpful to see the machines in front of us because we could understand how they were used.  Also the stories that he had were really interesting.  The only part that was a little annoying was the video quality, how it cut off what Jaime was saying sometimes and also screen wasn’t clear, but aside from that, it was really cool.  Plus, he’s from England talking to us from a totally different country!!!  I would love to do this again with other experts on other topics.  It was an entirely new experience and I really like it.