text: John Kay's 1733 flying shuttle enabled cloth to be woven faster, of a greater width, and for the process to later be mechanised. Cotton spinning using Richard Arkwright's water frame, James Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny, and Samuel Crompton's Spinning Mule (a combination of the Spinning Jenny and the Water Frame). This was patented in 1769 and so came out of patent in 1783. The end of the patent was rapidly followed by the erection of many cotton mills. Similar technology was subsequently applied to spinning worsted yarn for various textiles and flax for linen.
  The improved steam engine invented by James Watt and patented in 1775 was initially mainly used for pumping out mines, for water supply systems and to a lesser extend to power air blast for blast furnaces, but from the 1780s was applied to power machines. This enabled rapid development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale in places where waterpower was not available or not steady throughout the seasons.  Early steam engines had poor speed control, which caused thread breakage, limiting their use in operations like spinning; however, this problem could be overcome by using the engine to pump water over a water wheel to drive the machinery.