Erastus Brigham Bigelow was an American inventor of weaving machines.
American industrialist, noted as the developer of the power loom for making lace and many types of carpet. At the age of 23 he invented his first loom for making coach lace in 1837. Bigelow followed this with other power looms for weaving a variety of figured fabrics, tapestry carpeting, and ingrain carpeting. He obtained a patent for a power carpet loom on 26 May 1842. On 10 Apr 1845, he recieved the first U.S. patent for gingham manufacturing machinery. In 1861, he was a member of the committee that founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Erastus B. Bigelow, of Boston, one of the most eminent of American inventors, and the founder of the manufacturing town of Clinton, was born in West Boylston, Worcester county, Massachusetts. His father was a man of limited means, and the son was early inured to toil. He worked for a time on a farm and in a cotton-mill, but before he was eighteen years of age he had invented a band loom for weaving Suspender Webbing, a machine for making “Piping Cord,” and had written and published a book on Stenography, or shorthand writing.