British Northrop Loom Co Ltd was an engineering firm based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. The company manufactured machinery for producing textiles, particularly the Northrop Loom. [1]
It expanded rapidly around the time of the First World War, and by the 1950s it exported over 10,000 machines annually worldwide. [2]
With the exception of electric motors, the majority of loom parts were manufactured in the Blackburn factory which had a foundry, machine shop, a smithy for forging and welding, wood working shop for slays, bobbins and shuttles and an assembly line with the enterprise occupying a total area of 1,050,000 sq ft by 1956. Production declined in the face of competition from new technologies such as shuttleless looms from continental Europe and Japan.