Spinning Wheel

A spinning wheel is a device that automates the spinning of thread or yarn from fibers, replacing the older hand-held spindle by using a large wheel to drive a spindle at a steady pace, later fitted with a foot-operated treadle so the spinner's hands stayed free. It was fundamental to the textile industry before the Industrial Revolution and laid the technical groundwork for the spinning jenny and spinning frame that eventually displaced it, but historians dispute exactly where and when it first appeared: proposed origins include Zhou dynasty China in the first millennium BCE with widespread use by around 1090, India as early as 500 to 1000 AD, and the Middle East by the early eleventh century, where the earliest clear surviving illustration, from Baghdad, dates to 1237. Whichever origin is correct, the spinning wheel had spread widely across Asia, the Middle East and Europe well before the eighteenth century, when mechanized successors began to replace it.