First nitrogen gas pressure spinner and windup

The first spinning machine for nylon was a small brass pipe with a hypodermic needle attached to the lower end; later models, like this one added a separate chamber for melting the nylon. The pipe was filled with nylon chips and heated in a melt chamber until they melted. Nitrogen gas was fed into it under pressure, causing a thin filament of nylon to squirt out of the needle. Next, the nylon passed under a microscope, which projected its image on a screen so that it could be checked for uniformity. The fiber was stretched (cold drawn) between two rolls rotating at different speeds, and wound on a bobbin. The nitrogen gas pressure was adjusted in order to control the filament's thickness (denier). This device could only produce a small amount of filament at a time, so the process had to be repeated for each new polymer sample.