Lucius James Knowles was a descendant of Richard Knowles, immigrant, who came to Cape Cod before 1653. Lucius was born on July 02, 1819 at Hardwick, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Simeon, Jr. , and Lucetta (Newton) Knowles. Simeon was a farmer and a carriage maker, maintaining for the latter work the small shop which furnished Lucius the opportunity to develop an interest in mechanical construction and invention.
Lucius attended the public schools at Hardwick and then spent three years at the Academy at Leicester, Massachusetts.
At seventeen Knowles went to Shrewsbury to work in the country store of John Newton, his mother's brother, who in 1838 took him into the business which became John C. Newton & Company. But Knowles's interest was not in storekeeping. He spent more time constructing models of machines than in attending customers, and in 1841 he withdrew from the partnership and went to Worcester, Massachusetts, where he began a daguerreotype business, the first in that city. Here, too, he continued to dabble with mechanics and when he made an improvement in thread-spooling equipment he set up a small business for spooling thread which he bought from a mill in Worcester. He then spent two years experimenting with cotton spinning in the attempt to equal the quality of the English thread of that time.
For lack of capital he abandoned this and in 1846 formed a partnership with Harrison H. Sibley to operate the Old Draper Mill at Spencer, Massachusetts, for the manufacture of cotton warp. In 1849 they secured a small mill at Warren, Massachusetts, on the Quinebaug River, transferred their cotton business there, and in 1853 extended their activities to include a woolen mill which they built below the first. Still Knowles continued his experiments with mechanical improvement, receiving two patents for improvements in looms in 1856 and one for an improved method of operating the valves of pumping engines (1859).
In 1860 the partnership was dissolved and the business divided so that Knowles might devote more of his time to the invention and manufacture of machinery. In 1862 he erected a building near his cotton factory and began to manufacture a boiler-feed water regulator, and (1863) steam pumps and experimental looms. From this building grew the Knowles Steam Pump Company and the L. J. Knowles & Brother Loom Works. The pump company became one of the largest in the business and was in 1879 sold to the Blake Manufacturing Company of Boston. The loom firm was moved to Worcester in 1866 where it expanded very rapidly to a leading position in the trade, being in 1897 consolidated with the Crompton Works as the Crompton & Knowles Loom Works.
Though Knowles's inventions were responsible for much of the success of the two companies, few are outstanding or fundamental. He developed the steam pump to an advanced stage of refinement but so did other companies at the same time. An instance of his work in this connection is his adoption of the steam-actuated valve, for designs of which he received patents, though the invention is credited to H. R. Worthington. Similarly in looms he invented improvements tending to make manufacture more rapid and more economical of power. In this connection the open-shed principle of operation is an outstanding invention.
Knowles was also active in civic affairs. He represented Warren, New Braintree, and West Brookfield in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and the third Worcester district in the Senate. In 1871 he became a trustee of the Worcester Free Institute of Technology (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) and in 1873 was a member of the common council of Worcester.
Knowle was married first to Eliza Ann Adams of Shrewsbury, who died in 1873, and then to Helen Cornelia (Strong) Hayward of Boston.
