Edmund Cartwright was a poet and lifelong inventor born April, 24, 1743 in Nottinghamshire United Kingdom. Cartwrights parents were wealthy landowners in marnham and he and his 4 brothers were well educated. His brother John Cartwright was a radical leader with England's parliamentary reform movement, and his other brother george cartwright was a trader and explorer of labrador. Cartwright pursued a master’s degree with Oxford’s Magdalen College, finishing his MA in 1766. He soon became the rector of Leicestershire church.Edmund Cartwright married early in his life, at the age of 19 to Elizabeth McMac. The couple was had a daughter Elizabeth who went on to become an author, writing books under the pseudonym of Mrs Markham. Later on he was appointed…show more content… Cartwright did not start engineering and inventing till he was 40 years old. That was when he became serious about engineering and inventing. Cartwright became very interested in machinery. That year, he was invited to visit a factory owned by Richard Arkwright where he saw the newly invented spinning machines turning cotton into thread much faster than the old method. Arkwright had invented the spinning frame in 1769. Cartwright and his associates discussed the possibility that once Arkwright’s patents on these frames expired many mills using his technology were likely to spring up then much more thread would be produced quickly than could realistically be spun into cloth by human weavers. He then thought there was a way to make the weaving process automatic in order to keep pace. His colleagues didn’t believe it was possible, but with the help of a blacksmith and carpenter he began working on a machine that would prove them wrong. His first version of the machine was weak and unreliable but he got a patent and pushed on with his invention. Cartwright improved his loom concept and issued several more patents on his designs until 1788. He opened his own weaving mill in Doncaster, using steam power which was then a novelty, to…show more content… He went on to invent the alcohol powered engine. “The Cartwright engine was single-acting, the power cylinder sitting on top of a box of cold water used for condensing the exhaust vapour. It appears that alcohol vapour from the boiler was admitted to the top of the cylinder when the piston impacted a valve in the top of the cylinder. It was a bash value. The vapour then gets to the other side of the piston when a valve in it hits the bottom the cylinder; this does not sound like a recipe for optimal valve timing.” The real technological breakthrough here was indirectly connected with the use of alcohol. It was the first use of metallic piston rings to seal the pistons. This was driven by Cartwright's need to minimise the leakage of an expensive working
