MOSI Google Hangout

            In class, we planned out a day to have a live hangout with a man that worked at a museum from Manchester, England. Part of the museum is a replica of an old fashioned textile mill, like the ones we have been learning about in class.  To prepare for his visit, we did many things. We first went on the MOSI website to learn a few things about the mills. On cool thing that I learned was that the original creator of the water powered textile machines was named Richard Arkwright, and he was worth 28 million dollars (in today's economy) at the time of his death. We then watched a video that Jamie, our guide, put together about the museum and what we would be seeing. In the video, there were 8 vocab words that we had to look up and define, so that we would understand what he was talking about. Lastly, we came up with questions based on our knowledge at that point so that we could ask them during the Google Hangout.


            I think that the hangout was very beneficial. In class, we are able to learn about what these things were and what they looked like as a picture. Seeing all of these machines in real life was really interesting because you saw the kind of conditions that these people had to live with. We also got a more in depth account about how life was like at home before the mills came about. Jamie said that families whose spinning wheel broke ended up living in poverty for the rest of their lives because it was their only source of income.  During the time when the mills went up, families were no longer to use their spinning wheels to make fabric anymore because it was no longer efficient. This resulted in families sending their children to work at mills and a large loss of income for the families.

This machine took the threads and spooled them up into rolls, which were then made into fabric. The spools were moving at an extremely high velocity, but the children were still forced to clean out any of the cotton fibers that jammed. This resulted in hands being torn up and hair being completely torn out. When there was an accident in the mill, even one that could have been fatal, the workers were expected to carry on.


       I liked the discussion with the outside expert because he really was able to explain in detail what happened, and he was able to show us how it may have happened. I like that he was able to take time out of his day for this tour, and that he did a great job explaining things in a simple, yet meaningful way. I think that doing this again would be great because you are able to talk to someone with firsthand knowledge.