SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — A blast from the past is on display in Springfield. You may have never heard of a circular sock machine. The contraption dates back to the 1860s, allowing for quick manufacturing.

Sock machines have a metal tube in the middle with dozens of needles that act like robotic claws, grabbing pieces of thread and knitting them. Every few minutes, each machine spurts out what's called ...

While I was doing research for my book, Wartime: The First World War in a Canadian Town (which features Guelph), I came across the story of how women across Canada knitted various items for the ...

This is the first of a two-part report. Fort Payne is filled with people who built entire lives around the sock mills. In a town of 13,000 people, there were more than 8,000 sock mill jobs just a few ...