I HEARTILY endorse the views of Ron Freethy (LET, January 20) that the town's textile heritage be preserved.

I implore the council to not only preserve the looms and exhibits, but to go a step further - restore them and give them a place where they can be seen by even more people.

Blackburn, in many ways, was the heart of the Industrial Revolution and its adults and children worked many long hours to take our society to another level.

Yesterday's looms are today's computers. Looms were driven by punched cards as they evolved and so did computers.

We need more examples of 'automated looms' to tell a complete story so that our children today can see the significant part of Blackburn and its population played in, yes, world history.

STEVE LASSEY, Turquoise Way, Livermore, California, USA.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.