What textile machine did Samuel Crompton invent in 1779?

Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule, a textile machine developed around 1779.

Crompton’s machine combined important features of two earlier inventions: James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny and Richard Arkwright’s water frame. The result was a machine that could draw out, twist and spin cotton into finer, stronger yarn than many earlier systems could produce. Crompton initially called it a mule-jenny; the shorter name “spinning mule” became standard.

The machine was especially important in Lancashire’s rapidly expanding cotton industry. Its carriage moved back and forth while the spindles spun the thread, allowing operators to produce large quantities of high-quality yarn. Because Crompton could not afford a patent, he disclosed the machine’s design, and other manufacturers soon adopted and modified it. He therefore received little direct financial reward from an invention that transformed textile production.

The common mix-up is with the flying shuttle, water frame and power loom. Those machines were also crucial Industrial Revolution technologies, but they were associated with John Kay, Arkwright and Edmund Cartwright respectively. The spinning mule belongs to Crompton.