Sinking, sixth maneuver of a stocking-frame worker. [1] This consists of a rather slight movement: the worker pulls the needle bar horizontally toward himself, and by this movement causes the bellies of the fixed sinkers [2] to move forward until they find themselves between the heads of the needles, or even a little beyond. Then the piece being worked seems to drop down, but it is still held up by the needles; the mesh, however, has been completed. See Plate 2 of the Stocking-frame worker, fig. 2, 5, & 6 . In the fifth maneuver, the presser bar is above the beaks of the needles, the silk having been brought over their extremities, as is seen in fig. 1, 3, 4, but in the process of sinking, the presser bar is lifted up, and the bellies B of the fixed sinkers ( fig. 2 ) have caused the silk, which was only lying on their extremities, to sink beyond the heads of the needles, as is seen ( fig. 2, 5, 6 ). We see ( fig. 2 ) the bellies B C of the fixed sinkers moved forward among the heads of the needles. We see ( fig. 5 ) the work 3, 4, lowered; and we see ( fig. 6 ) the work lowered and held up by the needles, the meshes now having been formed, 5, 6. See the article Stocking Frame.

1. The stocking frame was a mechanical knitting machine invented by in England William Lee in 1589. The “framework knitting” it made possible — straight knitting, not tubular knitting, which was only achieved in the nineteenth century — would play an important role in the early Industrial Revolution. A separate steel needle made each loop of wool, or (as here) silk. The needles were supported by a needle bar that the operator moved. William Lee attempted and failed to obtain a patent for the stocking frame from Queen Elizabeth I and James I. He then moved with his workers and machines to France and was backed by Henri IV, but his business failed; Lee died in Paris in 1614. The stocking frame might have gone no further, but one of Lee’s assistants improved the machine by introducing the “dividers” or “fixed sinkers” described here. After jack sinkers pulled down a large loop over the needles and the sinker bar separated it out, the dividers or fixed sinkers rested on the loop and provided guidance as they were pulled forward. Thus modified, the stocking frame again came into use in France in the final decades of the seventeenth century. The hosiery industry of France came to be centered in Nîmes, a fact linked to migration patterns of Catholics from the British Isles during the Protectorate and the early years of the Restoration. Rouen and Paris were the first centers of framework knitting in France, but the stocking frame accompanied English and Irish exiles down the Rhone valley to Marseilles. By 1662 merchants associated with Colbert’s hosiery industry had settled in Avignon. See M. Sonenscher, “The Hosiery Industry of Nimes and the Lower Languedoc in the Eighteenth Century,” Textile History, vol. 10, no. 1 (1979): 142-60.

2. Fixed sinkers , also sometimes called dividers, are thin plates of shaped metal that hang between the needles (in French called platines ). See Thomas Brown, “Hosiery,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 13 (New York: Encyclopædia Britannica Company, 1910), 788.