As children we have all knocked four nails into the top of a cotton bobbin and by continuously hooking woollen yarn over the nails have produced a circular woollen "rope".
In a typical circular knitting machine for making socks, the four nails are replaced by about 250 needles and hooks, and up to as many as 400 in a machine for making nylon stockings. Although many types of machine were used by Hudson Hosiery including Banner and Komet, the photo shows a typical basic circular sock knitting machine. (This particular machine by Scott and Williams was built around 1915 and was still in operation in the Richelieu Hosiery Plant in Cornwall when it closed in 2000).