FACTS, FICTION…MY OPINION (The Entertainment Industry)
TEXTILE: THE SPINNING WHEEL… (History of Spinning Wheel)
TEXTILE: THE SPINNING WHEEL… (History of Spinning Wheel)
Bruce Bisbey
Executive Producer / Partner Dumb Dog Productions — Media Arts International Film Corporation
Textile: The Spinning Wheel
History
1000 years of spinning wheels
The spinning wheel is an ancient invention that helped to turned plant and animal fibers into thread or yarn, which were then woven by a loom into cloth. No one knows for certain who invented the first spinning wheel or when. Some evidence points to the invention of the spinning wheel in India between 500 and 1000 A.D. Other research indicates it was invented in China and then spread from China to Iran, Iran to India and then India to Europe.
Per se the spinning wheel was invented in China about 1000 AD and the earliest drawing of a spinning wheel that we have is from about 1035 AD (see Joseph Needham). Spinning wheels later spread from China to Iran, from Iran to India, and eventually to Europe.
For the previous 5,000 to 8,000 years, fiber was twisted or spun by hand on variants of the drop spindle.
The spinning wheel and cloth production
The drop spindle is a slow way of making the long lengths of fibre required for weaving cloth. And an even longer length of fibre was required to make the sails of Viking longboats. Spinning was therefore so important and time-consuming for cloth production that it was the bottleneck for clothing and for sail-making at a time when vertical warp-weighted looms were already in use to weave cloth and to an even greater extent when horizontal heddle looms took their place in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
According to Lynn White, the invention of the spinning wheel speeded up the rate at which fibre could be spun by a factor of 10 to 100 times, removing this bottleneck to cloth production. Lynn White argues that the spinning wheel lead to a breakthrough in linen production when it reached Europe around 1200 AD, with many more linen clothes being produced and many more linen rags being produced, with some unintended consequences.
1000 years of spinning wheels
The spinning wheel was invented in China about 1000 AD and the earliest drawing of a spinning wheel that we have is from about 1035 AD (see Joseph Needham). Spinning wheels later spread from China to Iran, from Iran to India, and eventually to Europe.
For the previous 5,000 to 8,000 years, fibre was twisted or spun by hand on variants of the drop spindle.
The spinning wheel and cloth production
The drop spindle is a slow way of making the long lengths of fibre required for weaving cloth. And an even longer length of fibre was required to make the sails of Viking longboats. Spinning was therefore so important and time-consuming for cloth production that it was the bottleneck for clothing and for sail-making at a time when vertical warp-weighted looms were already in use to weave cloth and to an even greater extent when horizontal heddle looms took their place in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
According to Lynn White, the invention of the spinning wheel speeded up the rate at which fibre could be spun by a factor of 10 to 100 times, removing this bottleneck to cloth production. Lynn White argues that the spinning wheel lead to a breakthrough in linen production when it reached Europe around 1200 AD, with many more linen clothes being produced and many more linen rags being produced, with some unintended consequences.
Spinning wheels and paper production
Printing Press in 1568In his paper on technology assessment, Lynn White suggests that the availability of linen rags, which resulted from a step change in linen production, also removed a bottleneck in paper production, which had been recently introduced from China.
Prior to the introduction of paper, books were made from parchment and a large Bible required the skins of two to three hundred sheep or calves to produce sufficient parchment.
Cheap paper then led to the introduction of printing by Gutenberg, the production of cheap books and broadsheets, and provided the opportunity for universal education and a basis for modern democracy. Therefore Cesare Marchetti argues that modern democracies are a direct, if unintended, consequence of the invention of the spinning wheel in China one thousand years ago.
The spinning wheel and naval warfare
It is equally likely that European colonial expansion and naval warfare are also a consequence of the invention of the spinning wheel.
The sails of Viking longboats prior to 1000 AD were entirely spun on drop spindles and the fibre for each sail would have required months of spinning before it was woven. The introduction of the spinning wheel, in combination with developments in weaving looms, would have allowed a dramatic expansion in the number, size speed of sailing ships for national and merchant navies. The consequence, or historical opportunity, of this being the colonization of the Americas, Africa and India by European navies and nations.
Therefore, the invention of the spinning wheel provided the historical opportunity for modern democracy and for naval warfare, as well as kick starting the large warfare, scale production of woven textiles.
All that is known for certain is that by the late Middle Ages and during the early Renaissance, spinning wheels appeared in Europe via the Middle East. Nevertheless, scientists have never been able to pin down the origins of the spinning wheel.
Ancient Beginnings
Evidence of hand spindles, from which spinning wheels evolved, are found in Middle East excavation sites dating back as far as 5000 BCE. In fact, the early spinning wheel — in its handheld form — helped to spin all of the threads for the fabrics in which Egyptian mummies were wrapped. It was also the primary tool used to spin ships’ ropes and sails.
In “Ancient History of the Spinning Wheel,” F.M. Feldhaus traces the origins of the spinning wheel back to ancient Egypt — not India or China — where before the development of modern technology it began as the distaff — which is a stick or spindle upon which wool, flax or another fiber is spun by hand.
Continued Evolution
It was a natural evolution that spinners invented a way to mechanize the process. The hand spindle — the distaff — was held horizontally in a frame and turned, not by hand twisting, but by a wheel-driven belt. The distaff was held in the left hand and the hand-driven wheel belt was slowly turned by the right hand.
Britannica.com writes that the distaff version of the spinning wheel evolved into a stationary vertical rod with a bobbin, and the wheel was “actuated by a foot treadle, thus freeing both of the operator’s hands.”
In 1764, a British carpenter and weaver named James Hargreaves invented an improved spinning jenny, a hand-powered, and multiple spinning machine that was the first real mechanized invention to improve upon the spinning wheel.
18th-Century Spinning Wheel
Britannica.com also reports that it was in the 18th century when the real demand for mechanical spinning wheels began — after the improvement of the earlier version created a yarn shortage. Thus began the true conversion of the spinning wheel into a “powered, mechanized component of the Industrial Revolution.”
Types
Numerous types of spinning wheels exist, including the great wheel also known as walking wheel or wool wheel for rapid long draw spinning of woolen-spun yarns; the flax wheel, which is a double-drive wheel used with a distaff for spinning linen; Saxony and upright wheels, all-purpose treadle driven wheels used to spin both woolen and worsted-spun yarns; and the charkha, native to Asia. Until the acceptance of rotor spinning wheel, all yarns were produced by aligning fibres through drawing techniques and then twisting the fiber together. With rotor spinning, the fibers in the roving are separated, thus opened, and then wrapped and twisted as the yarn is drawn out of the rotor cup.
Mythology and the Spinning Wheel
The spinning wheel inevitably conjures up one mythological tale or another. In the words of Siobhan nic Dhuinnshleibhe, “The Bible mentions spindles and spinning. … Arachne challenged the goddess Minerva to a spinning and weaving contest and was turned into a spider in Greek mythology. … Even our modern fairy tales mention spinning, as in Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and East of the Sun and West of the Moon.”
I hope you found this helpful,
Thank you,
Sources, References & Credit: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, World Book Encyclopedia, Pinterest, Linked In, BBC, Wikimedia, The Free Dictionary By Farlex, Wikisource, New York Fashion Center Fabric, How Things are Made, The Guardian, The Textile Magazine, Sew Guide, Textile School, Garments Merchandising, Pexel, Fabric Farms, Real Men Real Style, Simple, Fabric, My Learning, Mood Fabrics, Fabrics International, Independent, Gentleman’s Gazette, Primer Magazine, Textiles, Sew Guide, Craftsy, Julia Garza, Superior Threads, TED, Sara J. Kadolph, ‘Textiles’, Quora, Site Point, Encyclopedia Britannica, How It Works: Science and Technology. Mary Bellis, Thought Company, Lynn White, Wildfibres, “Hindoo Spinning-Wheel”, Spinning wheel. (2007). In Encyclopedia Britannica,
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Antique Spinning Wheel / Photo Credit: Adam — For My Generation
Spinning wheels come in many varieties, but everyone has at least some of these components / Photo Credit: NZ Spinning Wheels
