Textile Industry is launched in Boston.

Francis Cabot Lowell and mechanics Paul Moody build a power loom in a building at today’s 64 Broad Street. The first in the U.S., it is the product of Lowell’s recent tour of textile mills in England and Scotland, during which he memorized the design of the machinery – since British laws prohibited the export of plans for their construction. Nathan Appleton subsequently remarks, “I well recollect the state of admiration with which we sat by the hour watching the beautiful movement of this new and wonderful machine, destined. . . to change the character of all textile industry.” Lowell, Nathan Appleton, Christopher Gore, and Charles, James and Patrick Tracy incorporate the Boston Manufacturing Company on February 29, 1813, and build a factory in Waltham (first) in Waltham in 1814,* then another in Lowell in 1823.*