Bobbiner

A bobbiner is a weaver's assistant on shuttle weaving looms. A bobbiner has the job of filling the circular revolving batteries that are found on the side of the looms.  The loom automatically inserts a bobbin from the battery into the shuttle that then passes at high speed as a projectile back and forth across the loom with the yarn trailing from the bobbin and becoming the weft as the woven textile is constructed. Once the bobbin is empty, it is automatically replaced by a new bobbin and the old bobbin is collected in a skiff under the loom. 

The bobbiner takes bobbins from a skiff on the top of the loom, finds the free end of the yarn, inserts the bobbin into a slot on the rotating battery, and then secures the end of the yarn into a small slit - this secures the yarn so that the machine can pick it up when the bobbin is inserted into the shuttle. As the battery empties, the bobbiner has to keep up rotating between the looms in the bobbiner's section. The looms are running at high speed and rapidly use the bobbins, dependent upon the thickness of the spun yarn. A bobbiner might run two dozen looms in a cotton dust-laden environment  that was too loud for speech; loom operatives therefore learned to lip read to communicate during the weaving process.