"It stumbles, and gives you the most awful tosses, and it goes lame by its treadles and thingamejigs coming off, and it wears out, and is twice as much trouble to keep clean and scrape the mud off as a horse, and all sorts of things.

A little black girl sat on the floor, and with her hands worked the treadle of the machine.

He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad.

"Oh, now, really I didn't notice you," said she, taking a few turns of the treadle and steering the machine across to them.

Transponders, antennae, communication systems, treadles, inductive loops, scanning devices, weigh-in-motion devices, cameras and film storage devices are some of the major products of the system.

It must have been noisy when all the looms were working, with the weavers pressing down on the treadles, the cylinders turning round and the shuttles flying back and forth.

These new machines feature a balanced mainframe assembly, enhanced linear-guided platen systems, neutral link counterbalance systems, advanced canopy systems, cammed servo-feed systems, servo-driven treadles, servo ejectors, and efficient drive systems.

Amazingly though, the powers that be loved the pitch - a group of needle-threaders silently hunched over their bobbin winders and treadles for an hour knocking up a pleated skirt - and, lo and behold, into our living rooms it was duly beamed last Wednesday evening.