ered V to VIII but were mis-matched in the original assembly.
Further rigidity is achieved by means of hand-forged lag screws. The
arch of the frame is birch and the arch arm maple. The 14-inch doffer
roller is made of chestnut.[17] The iron shafts are square and turned
down at the bearings. The worker rollers are fitted with sprockets and
turned by a hand-forged chain. The comb plate, stamped "Standring," is
hand filed, and is undoubtedly one of those made before the
"teeth-cutting machine" was smuggled from England, for although
one-third of the plate is quite regular, the size and pitch of the teeth
in the remaining two-thirds are irregular. Part of this irregularity
might be explained as having been caused by the hand-sharpening of a
plate originally cut by machine, but the teeth in one 2-inch span not
only vary in size but have a pitch that would have been impossible to
produce after the original plate had been made.[18]

There is no doubt that this carding machine was made by Arthur
Scholfield, or under his immediate supervision, sometime between 1803
and 1814. It may well be one of the machines sent to southern New
Hampshire in 1809 or 1810, as it is known to have been run in Nashua and
Jeffrey, New Hampshire, in the 1820's and 1830's, after which it was run
by James Townsend in Marlboro, New Hampshire, from 1837 until 1890, when
it was exhibited at the Mechanics Fair in Boston. Mr. Rufus S. Frost
purchased the machine and owned it until his death in 1897. When the
Frost estate was settled, the old Scholfield wool-carding machine was
purchased by the Davis & Furber Machine Co., by which in 1954 it was
presented to the National Museum.

The disappearance of the original Scholfield carding machine is
regrettable, but fortunately the Scholfields' importance to the American
woolen industry does not depend on their having produced this one
machine. These brothers, arriving here at a critical time in our
nation's history, made important contributions to our economic and to
our technological progress--John by his mill operations, Arthur by his
ultimate work of constructing wool-carding machines for sale. Of these
two aspects, it is the contribution of Arthur that has had the more
far-reaching effect, for he spread his expert knowledge of mechanical
wool carding, in the form of machines, throughout the New England woolen
centers. His machines now stand as monuments to the work of both.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The same typ