an important centre for the cotton industry and the manufacture of textile machinery. In 1841 he took a job at the Hauboldsche textile machine works and within three years was a manager. In 1844 he took

In 1834 Dobri Zhelyazkov (also spelled Jeliazkov or Zhelyazkovac) established the first textile factory to be built anywhere in the Balkan peninsula or the Ottoman Empire. He successfully introduced woollen [...] and cloth, which gave him an opportunity to travel around Russia studying the industrialisation of textile production. In 1834 he returned with his family to Sliven and set up a small woollen factory with [...] state broadcloth company. Other factories were established and Sliven became a centre of mechanised textile production. Although Zhelyazkov to lead the company he had built, his reputation was undermined by

under the brand name Globus but soon also began making gun cartridges. Two years later he opened a textile factory at Ružomberok (now in Slovakia). By 1890, the arms industry was the most important branch

in Stockholm and was apprenticed in his uncle’s textile-dyeing workshop at Norrköping. At the age of 18 he began a three-year study tour to see textile industries in Sweden, Germany, Austria and other [...] plant on the Kuusankoski rapids at Kouvola, 130km north-east of Helsinki. In the 20th century the textile factories at Forssa became the largest in Finland under the brand Finlayson. Today Wahren’s spinning

another country. He worked in the cotton industry in Britain and then helped to establish mechanised textile industries in two regions – the city of Hamburg and lower Austria. He grew up on a farm in Yorkshire [...] manufacturers. At this time, Britain banned the export of machinery from the country’s innovative textile industries and the emigration of skilled workers, but entrepreneurs in Europe and America were keen [...] spinning flax in Pottendorf. He also supplied equipment for weaving, aiding growth throughout Austria’s textile industries. His brothers followed him to Austria and were involved with cotton mills close by: Joseph

Thomas Bracegirdle from Leeds, in 1830 he began a works for making textile machinery. He then set up his own business making textile machinery in 1835 at Prague, which supplied machines to a large proportion

there was rich in technology. His father Marc François Séguin founded a company to manufacture textiles; his mother Thérèse-Augustine de Montgolfier was the niece of the Montgolfier brothers, paper m

Sidney Stott was the best-known of a family of Lancashire architects, specialising in the design of textile mills, whose buildings can still be seen all over Europe and further afield. The first architect

steam-powered textile mill in Enschede. Soon afterwards, in 1835, he set up Weefgoederfabriek C T Stork, where he produced cloth on three looms. He found that competition in the manufacture of textiles was fierce

and bedspreads in silk, cotton and wool. In 1827 he married Regula Abegg, whose father owned a textile bleaching, dyeing and finishing works. With additional investment from his wife’s brother Hans, he

creation of the entrepreneur Alfredo da Silva who ran some 100 companies in diverse sectors: chemicals, textiles, transport, mining, olive oil, mechanical engineering, shipbuilding, tobacco, banking and insurance

the 1780s the business suffered competition from factories elsewhere in Europe and from a growing textile sector in Augsburg that benefitted from his skilled workforce. Schüle handed management to his sons

With his wife Malwine, the Swiss textile entrepreneur Jacques Schiesser established a company to make underwear in 1875 at Radolfzell in south-west Germany. It grew quickly and became a global brand. Jacques [...] father died when he was 25 and he inherited enough money to buy equipment from a bankrupt jersey textile factory and set up independently. Soon after this he decided to emigrate to Germany. With his wife

to 100,000 in 1878. It became one of the most important textile manufacturing cities in Europe. Łodz was a traditional area for hand-made textiles. From the 1820s mechanised mills for the woollen and flax [...] Rhineland. His family for several generations were entrepreneurs in the textile industry. He took an apprenticeship in Belgium at a textile factory at Vervier. Then, at the age of 19, he went to work at the [...] Karl (or Karol) Scheibler learned about the mechanised textile industries in several parts of Europe and took his knowledge to Łodz in Poland. The factory he built there in 1855 was one of the biggest

born in Basel when the dye and bleach industries there were evolving rapidly alongside the Swiss textile industries. His father was a cloth merchant. At the age of 19 he took an apprenticeship with a seller

screws and a range of drilling machines. At the same time he manufactured machine tools and gears for textile equipment. By 1821 he employed a dozen mechanics and in 1823 he went into partnership with the b

achieved distinction in mechanical engineering and played a large part in the development of the textile industry in Germany, but his principal achievement was to contribute substantially to the establishment [...] technical direction for ten years from 1842. He rapidly extended his interests and was a co-founder of textile mills in cities across Germany, in Bamberg, Bayreuth, Esslingen-am-Neckar, Köln (Cologne) and Worms

Flour Mills in London, built rolling mills for the Royal Mint and devised machinery for flour mills, textile factories, breweries and other steam-powered industries. In 1810 he built a new factory at Southwark

Izrael Poznański was a textile industrialist known as one of the ‘Three Kings’ of Polish cotton alongside his rivals Karl Wilhelm Scheibler and Ludwig Ferdinand Geyer. He was one of the leading figures [...] figures in the rapid growth of Łódź as a great industrial city. Poznański’s family were textile merchants who moved within the Russian Empire to Łódź when he was an infant. At this time Łódź had a small population [...] married Leonia Hertz, the daughter of a wealthy Warsaw merchant. At 19 he took over his family’s textile trading firm and expanded it into manufacturing. He bought up land gradually with long-term plans

acquired two more textile factories to the north of Porto in 1928, at Ermesinde and Rio Tinto. He developed markets in the Portuguese African colonies of Mozambique and Angola. While textile production was [...] Bonfim district of Porto, Portugal’s second city. He attended technical school and began work in the textile industry in 1894. He rose rapidly and became director of a fabric factory in Bonfim at the age of