Spinning mule Rhode Island. Development over the next century and a half led to an automatic mule and to finer and stronger yarn. The ring frame, originating in New England in the 1820s, was little used in Lancashire until the 1890s. It required more energy and could not produce the finest counts. Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule in 1779, so called because it is a hybrid of Arkwright's water frame and James Hargreaves' spinning jenny in the same way that mule is the product of crossbreeding a female horse with a male donkey (a female donkey is called a "jenny"). The
Spinning jenny the shuttleboxes and the picker which together allowed one weaver to double his output. This invention is commonly called the fly-shuttle. It met with violent opposition and he fled from Lancashire to Leeds. Though the workers thought this was a threat to their jobs, it was adopted and the pressure was on to speed up carding and spinning. The shortage of spinning capacity to feed the more efficient looms provided the motivation to develop more productive spinning techniques such as the spinning jenny, and triggered the start of the Industrial Revolution. Hargreaves kept the machine secret for some time, but