James Smith

Who was James Smith?

James Smith was a Scottish inventor whose inventions include a reaping machine, a subsoil plough and the first endless chain of flats for carding.

Smith's father, a self-made Glasgow businessman, died when he was two months old; his mother went to live with her brother, a friend and pupil of Richard Arkwright, and managing partner of cotton-works at Deanston. Smith attended Glasgow University before entering his uncle's factory and becoming manager aged 18. Aged 24, his invention of a reaping machine won him a medal from the Imperial Agricultural Society of St Petersburgh. In 1823 Smith came into possession of his uncle's farm, and set about systematically draining the soil and working it with a subsoil plough. In 1831 he published his agricultural recommendations as a small pamphlet, Thorough Draining and Deep Working, which attracted attention in the agricultural crisis of 1834.

Smith also introduced mechanical innovations in spinning: in 1834 he improved Archibald Buchanan's self-stripping card, filing a patent for fixing the flat cards on an endless chain, allowing them to be regularly cleaned.