The textile finishing machinery side of the business of Mather & Platt is the oldest part of the firm. Rapid expansion of the Lancashire cotton industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century led to an extension of’ the cloth bleaching and colouring trades which had grown up in the river valleys near to plentiful supplies of water. Yarn and fabrics coming from the spinner and weaver were in a rough unfinished condition- full of impurities, harsh to handle, grey in colour and unattractive to the eye. It was the business of the after—loom trades to eliminate these drawbacks and improve the fabrics by bleaching or dyeing and by printing and finishing (laundering) them. Salford Ironworks, a foundry and general engineering work’s already in 1795 "of considerable capacity and noted for improved steam engines", was centrally placed to serve the scattered bleaching and finishing firms. Probably its foundry bias accounts for its emphasis on finishing and the relative lack of interest in the design of’ the lighter mechanisms demanded by spinners and weavers. In studying
the industrial revolution, historians have perhaps paid
too much attention to the primary processes of the cotton
industry, spinning and weaving, and neglected the many
chances in the finishing side of the industry in the
nineteenth century. Salford Iron Works played an
important part in this second line of development. Bleaching
had become a chemical proposition after Tennents
exploitation of the use of chlorine as hypochlorite
(bleaching powder) about 1799. Lancashire soon followed
Scotland and by mid-century Mather & Platt at Salford
were largely occupied in providing machinery for all
bleaching processes and doing much to develop the
technology of the central process of “kiering”
or scouring. The
bleaching kier is a large cylindrical vessel in which
grey cotton —loose yarn or cloth — is boiled
with alkaline liquor. The two main technical problems
involved in kiering were those of heating and of securing
an efficient circulation of scouring liquor inside the
kier, In the early years of the industrial revolution,
kiers were heated. by direct furnaces; later on steam
from a central boiler installation was substituted; and
in 1853 Colin Mather patented a device which employed the
injector principle in the heating and circulation of the
liquor by steam. Finally in 1885 the Mather kier was
invented, and patented by William Mather. It treated the
yarn or fabric in waggons, within a horizontal
cylindrical vessel, and utilised a sluice valve door,
which allowed for the change of the contents of the kier
in a few minutes instead of several hours. By
means of a centrifugal pump the circulation was
maintained more efficiently than before and the heating
in the later models was provided by a multi-tubular
heater, which prevented the weakening of the liquor by
the condensation of steam and made for economy in the use
of chemicals. These
improvements marked a big advance on the previous system,
and Mather kiers have been supplied to more than 300 of
the principle bleaching, printing and dyeing works in
various parts of the world, and are still in steady
demand. Kiering was
the central process of bleaching but improvements were
also made in other techniques, such as
“singeing” and printing. Cotton fabrics are
“singed” before scouring in order to burn off
fibre ends projecting from the surface of the fabric.
Mather & Platt produced both plate-singeing and
gas-singeing machines. In singeing techniques the firm
was a pioneer, manufacturing internally heated revolving
roller machines, plate machines with oil firing and
traversing motion for the cloth, and gas singeing
machines with exhaust suction chambers drawing the flame
round the threads of the cloth. In
the case of textile printing, the basic invention had
been made by a Scotsman, Thomas Bell, who in 1783
patented a continuously running engraved roller printing
machine for calicoes, which could take the place of the
earlier and extremely laborious method of printing by
hand with engraved wooden blocks. This machine made
possible the production of the most accurate work at
relatively great speed, and at a labour cost with which
handwork could never have competed. This
important machine was introduced into Lancashire in 1785
and although displacement of hand block printing was
slow, and not nearly complete a century after Boll’s
patent, the demand for the new machine increased rapidly.
The invention was aptly timed, for the rollers were
easily driven first by water and then by steam. The
advantages of its use were obvious, for one roller
machine could produce as much as a hundred block
printers.(1) England led the Continent in the
development of the printing machine and Bell’ s
wooden framed prototype gave way to a more durable roller
printing machine with cast iron sides, central
‘bowl” and radially placed printing rollers -
which has altered little in its main characteristics to
this day. William and.
Colin Mather were very early makers of these printing
machines. An ancient three-colour machine was sold by
auction in 1950 for demolition with a proviso against
further use in production! It bore the name “W.
& C. Mather, Manchester” and so must have been
made before the Mather and. Platt partnership was formed
in 1852. A
study of the surviving early order books of the
partnership, which go back to 1866, shows the importance
and wide range of finishing machinery amongst the
firm’s products in the middle years of the
nineteenth century. In
1866 no less than 13 printing machines, 18 shearing
machines used for providing a cloth surface free from
thread and fibre ends measuring and lapping machines, and
13 drying machines were sold. In addition there were
sales of calenders for smoothing and flattening the
surface of fabrics; raising machines for changing the
smooth surface of fabrics to a degree of “nap”
or hairiness, which made them soft to handle and. warm to
use; dyeing, damping, folding, padding, rolling,
piece—end sewing (2), stretching, drying,
and. wool—burring machines; squeezers, steaming
cottages and mangles. In that year, 1866, only two kiers
were sold, but in 1886, after the introduction of the
Mather Kier, 25 were entered in the order book.
In the
1840’s competition in the textile finishing
machinery industry was extremely keen, and this led the
firm to follow three lines of action — first, to try
to reduce processing costs by inventions such as the
Mather Kier; second, to seek markets overseas; and third
to take up new lines of manufacture. There
was much inventiveness in the firm in those days,
particularly on the part of Colin Mather, one of the
liveliest engineering minds of his age. He was versatile,
practical and imaginative, and his schemes provided the
technical basis for the success of the Mather & Platt
partnership. Just as William Mather, his nephew, later
looked to Germany for ideas on technical education, so
Colin searched Europe for ideas concerning new methods in
the finishing trade. In 1852 we find him sharing a patent
for ”certain improvements in -printing, damping,
softening, opening and. spreading woven fabrics”
with Ernest Rolffs, “of Cologne, in the kingdom of
Prussia, gentleman”(1). Later on he sent
one of his sons John Harry Mather to Mulhouse in Alsace,
which was then the great centre of learning for the
chemistry of dyestuffs, to study and qualify in the use
of textile processing machinery. In order to expand an
engineering business in the so-called golden age of
Victorian industry, it was necessary to have a shrewd eye
for openings, particularly when home competition was
acute. The discovery of
overseas markets was the obvious way to meet the keen
competition, which resulted from a fluctuating home
demand. Down to 1843 the export of many types of textile
machines was prohibited by law, but during the
1850’s and 1860’s Great Britain was able to act
as a central source of supplies for foreign
manufacturers. Representatives of Mather & Platt,
particularly “Cast Iron Colin” and the young
William Mather, paid prolonged visits to countries far
and near, to study the requirements of prospective
customers, to give them the benefit of technical
knowledge and to undertake the equipment of complete
works designed to suit the particular country and the
tastes of its business men. Careful use was made of a
detailed knowledge of local conditions, fuel and power
supplies, and transport methods. Hence we find that
Mather & Platt helped to carry the industrial
revolution to overseas countries; in some countries, like
Russia, blazing the industrial trail. The
story of the quest for Russian trade is an interesting
one and is best told at this point. Colin Mather had
visited Russia as early as 1850 — his passport of
that date still exists — and he was sufficiently
familiar with that country to take with him on one of
several subsequent journeys his oldest daughter Martha.
In 1859, when the English textile machinery industry was
in a comparatively depressed condition the long life of
the equipment already supplied meaning that there was no
replacement demand, and the lack of important new
inventions meaning that there was little technical
obsolescence — William Mather met William Thornton,
founder of the greatest woollen and cloth mills in
Russia. Thornton stressed the possibilities of industrial
expansion there, and a year later Mather set out for
Russia. In the meantime he had entered into
correspondence with the firm of Knoops in Moscow, which
later became agent for Mather & Platt in the chief
manufacturing districts of Russia.
William
Mather’s first visit was so successful that regular
visits were made in the following six years. From letters
and diaries we glean an interesting picture of
Mather’s travels through the wastes and how he takes
in the beauties of the country without turning his eye
from glimpses of business openings. For instance, in a
letter to his wife in 1867, he described how “last
night we met an immense wolf right in our path, as large
as a donkey". He goes on “I am staying with an
English manager here at a large cotton mill and print
works. It is most probable we shall have the contract to
build a complete new works here”. (1) Scattered about
the diaries, between long descriptions of natural
scenery, are desultory jottings of the dimensions of mill
machinery. Occasionally other industrial projects, such
as coal mining and railway building are described. At
times he helped those responsible for the schemes to
obtain financial backing. One of the biggest enterprises
with which he was associated was the construction of a
calico printing works at Schlusselburg in 1866.
“England is so full of competition, so overdone in
everything”, Mather wrote, “that all the energy
one spends upon it brings no adequate return, while here
it will bring great results.”(2) The opening
up of intimate connections with Russia endowed Mather
& Platt with a distinct personality among English
firms; it also guaranteed useful markets during the
period of depressed foreign trade after 1873. Routine
orders continued to come in, such as a typical one for a
pair of kiers in 1876: — “Same as last sent to
34 mill — Welded Rings and double riveted to Belts
— To be sent via Reval, thro’ freight to
Moscow. Consigned. to Geo. Malmras — Reval &
invoiced direct to A.W.R. in Moscow.”(3)
The perusal of such cryptic entries opens a window on to
a world in which Russia was still dependent on the west
for its basic industrialisation. During
the last quarter of the nineteenth century, there was a
quest for even more distant markets. Largely as a result
of the efforts of Colin Mather, son of “Cast Iron
Colin” considerable quantities of machinery were
shipped to the U.S.A. until the heavy McKinley tariff of
1890, succeeded in keeping out British finishing
machines. It was then that one of Mather & Platt's technical experts, who had been working in the U.S.A. for some time decided to settle down there and in due course became the head of the United States Finishing Machinery Company. Other North American markets were not neglected. In 1883/4, for instance, the first Canadian calico printworks was built in Magog and equipped with machinery supplied by Mather & Platt. Mexican trade was developed during the same period when the only transport for travellers and for machinery alike was on muleback over the mountains. To meet these conditions machinery had to be designed specially and despatched in sections small enough to be carried by this primitive means. After Mexico had been explored, successful efforts were made to develop textile-finishing works throughout Brazil and India, both of which eventually became large importers of Mather & Platt machinery. In India a resident staff of experienced textile engineers gave technical service to machinery users and so established for the firm an enviable position in that market. Later still orders were secured from Japan and China and by l914 the firm had provided equipment for bleaching, dyeing, printing and finishing in every country in the world where cotton fabrics were produced.
The
expansion of markets was merely one side of the extension
of the activities of the concern during the nineteenth
century. The development of new lines of manufacture was
of equal importance. From the eighteenth century onwards
one of the central problems of technical progress was the
harnessing of power, and when the Sherratts (Mathers
predecessors) were at Salford Iron Works they produced
steam engines for many industries. W.& C.Mather and
later Mather & Platt continued this line of
manufacture, producing not only large engines for driving
whole factories and subsequently for generating electric
power (one of their early orders in this field being the
installation of a row of nine engines, each of 1,000
horsepower, with generators for the electrolytic alkali
industry) but also engines of smaller types suitable for
driving individual machines, Condensers and air pumps
were also made and patented pistons and piston rings of
an improved design were introduced at an early date.
Steam engine manufacture continued, with a notable
reputation for reliability until — largely as a
result of the firm’s own pioneer work in the
electrical field — engines for direct driving of
machines were superseded by electric motors. The
story of electrical engineering must be told in detail
later, for it led the firm to branch out into many new
lines of development, but the use of electrical power had
important repercussions on the development of textile
machinery and the firm became specialists in the
provision of electric drives for all classes of textile
machinery. Apart from developing new uses for electric
power, Mather & Platt contributed to other
improvements in the textile industries. There was a
general tendency in the closing years of the nineteenth
century to shift the firms production from single
machines and small items like mandrels, pulleys, spur and
bevel wheels, (the “universal provider”
services of a textile town) to complete ranges and whole
installations suitable for world markets. Since 1880 some
of the large textile machines have been greatly developed
and improved in design to fit the needs of an electrified
and increasingly standardised age. Improvements in
machine tools, many introduced by Manchester men like
Roberts and Whitworth, led to a greater accuracy and
reliability in the performance of machines which were no
longer made entirely by hand, and thus encouraged a
radical transformation of industrial methods in general. Mather &
Platt contributed to this process, before and after 1914.
For instance, in addition to improving the design and
technique of finishing machinery the firm patented in
1907 an automatic warp—stop motion, a device that,
as the name implies — automatically stopped a loom
upon the breaking of a warp thread. In days of depression
in the cotton industry, it was important that operatives
should be enabled to attend a greater number of looms,
and such devices contributed to the “more looms per
weaver” arrangements. As well as saving labour, they
improved the quality of the cloth by minimising the risk
of broken threads and by making good work less dependent
on the attention of the individual weaver (1).
The Mather & Platt motion was simple, cheap, easy to
attach to existing looms and in an improved form is still
in operation.
Another
auxiliary for textile manufacture of which Mather &
Platt were early producers was the
“humidifier”; a device for producing in dry
weather, and in hot countries, the moist atmospheric
conditions which had rendered the Lancashire climate
particularly suitable for cotton spinning and weaving.
The Mather & Platt “Vortex” humidifier is
still a valuable accessory in many weaving sheds. In the
finishing trades there were important new developments,
particularly as a result of changes in the chemical
industry, and Mather & Platt not only continued to
improve processing machinery, but also became general
contracting engineers during the first World War for the
erection and equipment of the great chemical factory for
colours and war materials of British Dyestuffs
Corporation (now I.C.I.) at Huddersfield. After the War,
one of the early plants for manufacture of rayon, that of
Nuera at St. Helens, was largely equipped with plant
manufactured by Mather & Platt Ltd. In
processing machinery itself there have been important
developments in recent years. Processes which have stood
out as being of special interest are electrolytic
production of hypochlorite; stentering and mercerising;
improvements in printing machinery; steaming after
printing. In warm
climates bleaching- powder (calcium hypochlorite, since
Tennent, essential in cotton bleaching is not stable, and
when exported to the tropics often loses a large part of
its strength in transit. Mather & Platt met this
difficulty by introducing their electrolyser and
perfected a process based on the production of sodium
hypochlorite (an equally effective and in some ways
preferable bleaching agent) by electrolysis of a solution
of common salt (sodium chloride). Mather & Platt
Electrolysers make available in any part of the world
from readily obtainable material (common salt) and at
moderate cost, the excellent bleaching agent sodium hypochlorite. These
Electrolysers have also other uses outside the textile
industry. In the worst days of the first World War
medical officers in the Near East demanded large supplies
of a powerful disinfectant, and it was suggested by Dr.
Dakin that hypochlorite might be obtainable from
seawater. This project was presented to Mather &
Platt Ltd and with the utmost urgency Electrolysers
adapted for this purpose were produced and installed in
the hospital ship “Aquitania”. “Dakin's
solution”, as it was known, proved of immense value
and greatly reduced the loss of’ life in the
Near-East campaigns. Similar Electrolysers now form part
of the equipment of many liners. Turning from bleaching to the processes of drying and finishing we find that Mather & Platt were responsible for great improvements. As early as 1875 Colin Mather patented the spiral bucket for removing condensed water from drying- cylinders while in the last quarter of the nineteenth century striking improvements were made in stentering and mercerising. Wet processing of textile fabrics necessitates a drying operation and in order to effect this with evenness, regularity of width and control of shrinkage, it was an early custom to fix the cloth by its selvedges on rows of pins projecting from adjustable rails in a warm drying room. The procedure
was called “tentening”. For quicker production
these rails were replaced by moving chains carrying pins
on their links, which constituted a tentening machine or
stenter. Spring clips instead of pins were next used, but
both required skilled hand labour and limited the speed
of the machine, and real progress remained slow until
1888 when Mather & Platt patented their
“automatic self-feeding clip stenter” on to
which the cloth could be fed without hand labour. The
clip automatically gripped the edge of the fabric and
tightened its hold as tension increased. This device
saved much labour and allowed a greater running speed.
The clip stenter was generally adopted throughout the
cotton trade, but pin stenters continue in use in the
silk and wool industries. For
rayons, some of which are fragile when wet, and liable to
permanent marking by clips, and for fabrics which must be
permitted to shrink during drying, the pin stenter has
again become the favoured machine. Mather and Platt
resumed manufacture of the pin stenter in 1937 adopting a
Continental patent for “overfeeding”, i.e.
feeding to the chain somewhat more than its own length of
fabric, so as to permit shrinkage during drying with full
development of the crepe or other characteristic figure
of the fabric. Both types of stenter — clip and pin,
are of the greatest importance in the textile finishing
trades, and both are manufactured in quantity by Mather
& Platt. An important
special application of the automatic clip stenter is in
the process known as mercerising. It was in the middle of
the nineteenth century that John Mercer, a calico printer
of Accrington, investigated the action of strong caustic
soda on cotton and obtained a permanent alteration of the
cotton fibre, with the resultant shrinking of the yarn or
cloth producing a distinctive type of finished fabric.
Mercer took out a patent in 1850 and showed some crimped
material produced by caustic shrinkage at the Great
Exhibition of 1851. It provoked little interest, however,
and the process had no commercial success even after Lowe
in 1889 took out a patent for mercerising under tension,
by which cotton could be given a permanent lustre. Characteristically,
it was the Germans who re-discovered and exploited the
process in 1895, when Thomas and Prevost of Krefeld
secured new German patents for the manufacture of the
lustrous and richly dyeable product originated by Lowe.
Great interest in “mercerising”, as this cotton
lustering process came to be called, arose in the late
nineties and many proposals were made and patents
registered for mechanisms to effect the necessary
stretching of the caustic saturated cloth and its washing
whilst stretched. Mather &
Platt Ltd as leading makers of clip stenters, immediately
adapted this machine for use with caustic soda and
acquired Warr’s patent for counter-current washing
during passage over the chain. The “chain
merceriser”, first produced by the firm in 1898,
proved most successful and has outlived all other types. The
roller-printing machine continues to be a key item in the
equipment of the textile processing trades. Although
still embodying the fundamental principles of Bell’s
invention and the general design so happily evolved by
the early pioneer makers, the printing machine and its
auxiliaries have been ceaselessly improved and adapted
for particular purposes. In these modifications a
prominent part has been taken throughout by Mather &
Platt who have manufactured more machines for printing
textiles than any other firm in the world. Machines have
been supplied to print anything from one-colour up to as
many as twenty-four colours and to print materials of all
widths and of every texture from gauze to linoleum.
Specialities have included high-speed single colour
machines for the fastest production, duplex machines for
the simultaneous printing of the same pattern on both
sides of the cloth, and intermittent printing machines
for the production of saris and other unit garments such
as sarongs and kang’as whose patterns terminate in
cross borders, so that printing must ‘be done
alternately by different sets of rollers. Auxiliaries
of the printing machines include machines for drying
after printing, and blanket washing machines to enable
the travelling blanket which passes with the fabric
through the printing machine to be washed, dried, cooled
and returned continuously. The latter type of machine was
produced as early as 1865 but has since been greatly
improved. It was first used in England and was adopted
only much later ‘by Continental and American
printworks. Progress
in the use of synthetic dyes, started by William
Perkin’s discovery in the mid-nineteenth century, of
the first “Aniline” dyes, produced a new
applied chemistry for the dyeing and printing trades. It
inaugurated “the glorious era of a formerly unknown
union of science and industry”(1), and
demanded a continual adaptation of textile machinery,
particularly that designed for the processes subsequent
to printing. There were, in particular, great
improvements in the most interesting and important of
these processes, that known as “steaming”,
carried out for fixing the printed colour upon the
textile fabric. From
the earliest days of calico printing, fixation of many
colours depended upon “ageing” - long exposure
to moist air — for which large hanging rooms and
much time and labour were required. In 1879 Mather &
Platt introduced their “Rapid Ager”, an
enclosed metal steaming chamber with rollers for
continuous running. It revolutionised the processing of
prints and long outlived the types of colour (mordents
and vegetable colourings) for which it was first devised.
Indeed it has been of the greatest importance throughout
the synthetic dyestuffs period. In the literature of
printing in all languages it is referred too familiarly
as the ‘Matherplatt”, and several languages
have verb forms derived from it such as
‘Matherplattieren” (German) and
“Plattning” (Swedish) which meant
“Steaming in a Matherplatt”. In English the
older expression of “ageing” has survived. The
“ager” has been closely associated with all
processes, employing short period steaming, from aniline
black onwards. It was the obvious and for many years the
only machine readily adaptable for steaming the important
'vat' dyestuffs and for discharge prints employing
hydrosulphite reducing agents. During
the later nineteenth century some then very important
classes of printing colours - the alizarines, chrome
mordant and ‘basic types required a much longer
steaming time than the “Matherplatt” afforded.
For those the “Festoon” continuous steamer was
invented. In this machine the prints, hung over poles,
travelled slowly along a very large steam filled chamber.
This
replaced the inconvenient “Cottage” batch
steamer and became standard equipment of large printworks
in many countries. In the early twentieth century it was
re-designed to suit the conditions required for the very
important “vat” colours and it is today the
most advanced form of print steaming equipment and still
chiefly a Mather & Platt production. Dyeing,
washing and soaping machinery in endless variety for all
wet processes; mangles, drying machines, calendars of all
types and bowls for calenders in iron, steel, brass,
paper, cotton and jute, have all been the subjects of
scientific study and technical improvements An
early calico printer, making or losing his fortune in
Manchester in the pioneer days of the eighteenth century
industrial revolution, would be amazed to see how
complicated and scientific the modern textile industry
has become. Many different sciences have become the
handmaids of’ the industry, and many major advances
of recent years have been the result not of individual
invention but of deliberate scientific research. Yet, however
much technical conditions change, business initiative
still remains the lever of’ the economic system, and
during the difficult years of the depression which
followed 1929, Mather & Platt profited from the fact
that they were producing many different types of general
machinery and were not tied to the textiles industry
alone. The
early 1930’s were years, which required perseverance
and enterprise among textile machinery manufacturers, and
there was a stimulus to improve once the corner had been
turned. New departures were made in the production of
machinery for the processing of rayon and for
carpet—making. Wider markets were found. overseas in
face of keen foreign competition. Permanent
representation was maintained in India by engineering
staffs at offices in Calcutta and Bombay, as well as in
Brazil, Egypt and several countries on the continent of
Europe. There
is little doubt that both from a technical and a business
point of view the expansion of Mather & Platt as a
firm concerned with the production of machinery for many
industries has been a wise and farsighted development.
Board of Trade statistics indicate that in 1938, out of
512 firms wholly engaged in the production of textile
machinery 450—470 were “small firms, chiefly
engaged in making accessories or in general jobbing
work”, (1) in other words they had
advanced little from the economic structure of the
mid-Victorian world. Mather & Platt had been able to improve its textile machinery business by increasing the scope of its production in other lines as well. By watching the broad horizons of technical change, it had seized its opportunities to grow into a well-balanced engineering enterprise. To realise the nature of its achievement the other branches of its activities will now be examined in turn.
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A History of Mather & Platt
Ltd.