1Petition of William Pollard to the Patent Board, 29 June 1790 (Jefferson Papers)
Philadelphia, 29 June 1790. He represents that more than a year ago he purchased for several hundred pounds a model of Sir Richard Arkwright’s “machine for Roving and Spinning of Cotton” that had been brought to this country at great risk and potentially heavy penalty, that a machine he built to small scale from the model would not work, either through poor workmanship in the model or by...