Spinning frame stolen from) another inventor called Thomas Highs. With the help of other local craftsmen the team produced the spinning frame, which produced a stronger thread than the spinning jenny produced by James Hargreaves. The frame employed the draw rollers invented by Lewis Paul to stretch, or attenuate, the yarn. The roller spinning process starts with a thick 'string' of loose fibres called a "roving", which is passed between three pairs of rollers, each pair rotating slightly faster than the previous one. In this way it is reduced in thickness and increased in length before a strengthening twist is added by
John Kay (spinning frame) collaborated in investigations of machinery for the manufacture of textiles, including the spinning of thread by means of rollers. By 1763 weaving was already automated, but spinning was still done by hand. Lewis Paul had made a machine using mechanical rollers in 1738, but this had not not been a commercial success. In 1767, Kay began a working relationship with Richard Arkwright, a wig-maker and entrepreneur. The character of this relationship, and in particular, the competing claims of Arkwright, Kay, and also Highs to primacy as inventors, were subsequently to become the subjects of bitter legal dispute (see below). Arkwright