High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! William Lee [c.1563-1614] was an English inventor who devised the first stocking frame knitting machine in 1589, the only one in use for centuries. Its principle of operation remains in use. Lee was born about the year 1563 in the village of Calverton, Nottinghamshire. He entered Christ's College, Cambridge in 1579 as a sizar and graduated from St. John's College in 1582. Lee was a curate at Calverton when he is said to have developed the machine because a woman whom he was courting showed more interest in knitting than in him (or alternatively that his wife was a very slow knitter). His first machine produced a coarse wool, for stockings. Refused a patent by Queen Elizabeth I, he built an improved machine that increased the number of needles per inch from 8 to 20 and produced a silk of finer texture, but the queen again denied him a patent because of her concern for the security of the kingdom's many hand knitters. He entered into a partnership agreement with one George Brooks on 6 June 1600, but the unfortunate Brooks was arrested on a charge of treason and executed.

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