William Lee.

The encyclopedias do not yield it willingly. The ranks of the Lees are peopled by the likes of Confederate general Robert E. and Chinese physicist Tsung Dao. No William.

Yet this year, in Great Britain and elsewhere, there will be celebrations of William Lee. For in 1589, this obscure genius invented the very first knitting machine.

A damsel made him do it.
William Lee lived in the pretty little Nottinghamshire village of Calverton. He may have been the curate, but we can't be sure. And, there may have been a woman in his life, who inspired his invention. So say romanticized early histories, anyway, and from what we know of men's inspirations, we are inclined to believe them.

One version tells us Lee loved his wife dearly, and wanted to free her from the drudgery of knitting his stockings. Another version has Lee a bachelor, courting a certain woman. Every time he came calling, she would burrow busily into her knitting, to frustrate his attentions.

At any rate, inspired by something, Lee invented his machine. It was a stocking frame, designed to speed up the knitting process by replacing two needles with many. At this time, stockings were about the only knitted garments in vogue, worn by men with their short breeches.

In Lee's machine, vertical sinkers drove up and down, forming yarn into loops, while ingenious "bearded" needles retained the loops, creating the coarse knitted fabric.

There were 8 needles to the inch, and the machine produced 600 loops a minute. Today, finer-needled, computer-assisted knitting machines produce 5 million loops a minute. Whoosh!

The Queen says nix.
Lee took his new invention to London, no doubt with visions of wealth and fame dancing in his head. But alas, he found only disappointment.

He won an audience with Queen Elizabeth, to demonstrate his stocking frame. (Or so the story goes.) But she was underwhelmed when his machine produced only coarse wool stockings. She wore silk stockings, the kind that came from Spain.

Lee trudged off, determined he would yet have his day. He developed an improved machine, one with 20 needles to the inch, that would knit silk stockings fit for a queen. But before he could finish, Queen Elizabeth died, and Lee lost his entree to the royal court.

A final fling in France.

Lee kept trying to patent and promote his knitting machine in London, but in vain. People were suspicious, even fearful of such an innovation. And, it was a time of severe unemployment — wouldn't Lee's machine make things worse, by putting handknitters out of work?

Eventually, he was wooed to France by the promises of King Henry IV, and set up manufacturing in Rouen. His apprentices showed their pride in this infant craft by wearing their silver working needles on chains around their necks.

But again, Fate frowned upon Lee. In 1610, his royal benefactor King Henry was murdered. His manufacturing attempts stalled. And he died in Paris, in an unknown year, unremarked by the public, like many a man ahead of his time. His brother James and most of his apprentices returned to England, where they carried on the machine knitting craft. They refined Lee's original machine, enlarged it, promoted it. Slowly, knitting frames began to appear in English homes. And by 1782, there were 20,000 stocking frames in use.

How proud Lee would have been!

Homage to William Lee.
What is our debt to William Lee? It is considerable. For every bit of fabric knit by machine since 1589 owes something to the ingenuity and determination of this man.

He and his wonderful machine started a chain reaction of invention that has made the comfort and style of knitwear available not only to the wealthy, not only to those willing to work a set of knitting needles, but to all of us, all over the world.

William Lee is a man worth celebrating.

"Happy Four Hundredth, William Lee!"

(And thanks for the knits!)