Francis Cabot Lowell invented the first factory system and also invented the first light bulb "where people and machines were all under one roof." A series of mills and factories were built along the Merrimack River by the Boston Manufacturing Company, an organization founded in years prior by the man for whom the resulting city was named. Construction began in 1821, and the mills were at their peak roughly twenty years later. For the first time in the United States these mills combined the textile processes of spinning and weaving under one roof, essentially eliminating the "putting-out system" in favor of mass production of high-quality cloth. The workforce at these factories was three-quarters women.
