in England, but soon also in continental Europe after German entrepreneur Johann Gottfried Brügelmann managed to find out details of the technology, which had been kept very secret – disclosure of details was punishable by death penalty. Brügelmann managed to build working waterframes and used them to open the first spinning factory on the continent, built 1783 in Ratingen and also named "Cromford", from where the technology spread over the world. The factory building today hosts a museum, which is the world's only place to see a functioning waterframe. Samuel Slater brought the water frame to America, circumventing the 1774 English ban on textile workers leaving and memorizing details of its construction; he left for New York in 1789. Moses Brown and Slater partnered to create the Slater Mill in Pawtucket in 1793, the first water-powered machine to make thread in America. References External links Demonstration of water frame, YouTube Cromford Mills World Heritage Site, https://www.cromfordmills.org.uk/ Textile machinery Spinning English inventions History of the textile industry Industrial Revolution in England