Between 1811 and about 1816, textile workers in the English Midlands and the North already worked at knitting frames that had existed since the 1500s. They rented them, paid the rent when orders were thin, and sold the work back to a clothing merchant. This way of working remained dominant until the rise of manufacturing models, or rather textile machines, that reduced the need for human interaction. We can see parallels today, perhaps not in the weaving or textile trade, but in white-collar workers such as graphic designers, data scientists, and programmers. Much is made of the transition to using AI in modern office workflows, but can we learn anything from the annals of British Industrial History?