Machine for spinning - drawing out fibres and
twisting them into a long thread, or yarn.
Spinning was originally done by hand, then
with the spinning wheel, and in about 1767
James Hargreaves in England built the
spinning jenny, a machine that could spin 8,
then 16, bobbins at once. Later came Samuel
Crompton's spinning mule 1779, which has a
moving carriage carrying the spindles and is
still used today. Also used is the
ring-spinning frame introduced in the USA in
1828 where sets of rollers moving at
different speeds draw out finer and finer
thread, which is twisted and wound onto
rotating bobbins. Originally, some 9,000
years ago, spinning was done by hand using a
distaff (a cleft stick holding a bundle of
fibres) and a weighted spindle, which was
spun to twist the thread. In the 1300s the
spinning wheel appeared in Europe, though it
had been used earlier in the East. It
provided a way of turning the spindle
mechanically. By the next century, the wheel
was both spinning and winding the yarn onto a
bobbin, but further mechanical development
did not come until the 18th century.