An assignment

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An assignment on
History of spinning

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Introduction :
If we want to know anything, firstly we should to know about the history. If we know the history
then attraction on those things will increase. In this review we will discuss the history of the yarn
spinning and Classification of spinning techniques. Why conventional spinning has converted
into modern or advance spinning? In conventional spinning process, production would be very
less, higher wastage, unhealthy, environmental inappropriate and overall cost would be high. So,
for the demand of time, conventional spinning replaced with modern spinning. We will describe
step by step.
Whether accomplished by hand or by machine, spinning is the simple process of drawing out a
few fibers, twisting them together into a continuous length, and winding them into a ball or onto
a stick. Just when people discovered how to do this is not known but we have archeological
evidence to suggest that spinning was practiced in Europe at least as early as 20,000 years ago.
In the early days of spinning, the drawing out and twisting of the fibers was done by hand; later
the winding stick itself was modified by the addition of a weight, or whorl, at its lower end
(which gave increased momentum). Thus modified the winding stick became the spinning
implement, or hand spindle. Many variations on the size and design of the hand spindle can be
found in different cultures. The spinning wheel, invented in India between A.D. 500 and 1000,
was simply a mechanical way of turning the spindle. The person spinning turned the wheel,
which was powered by a driving belt that turned the spindle. The actual drawing, twisting, and
winding of the yarn was accomplished in the same way as with a hand spindle. But the wheel
power gave a steadier rate of speed and left both hands of the spinner free to manage the fibers.
By the 13th century, the spinning wheel had been introduced to Europe, where two centuries
later a new and more complex type of wheel appeared. While the simpler spinning wheel
remained popular to spin the shorter fibers of wool and cotton, the newer type of wheel, which
provided continuous spinning, was especially successful for the longer flax fibers. Both the
simpler "wool wheel" and the more complex "flax wheel" came to America with the early
colonists. By the mid 17th century, the demand for cloth had grown tremendously throughout
Europe, and in many countries weaving was done professionally rather than in every home as
previously. Improved weaving techniques prompted better spinning methods. Inventions and
improvements followed one after the other in the 18th century. In the fifty-five years from 1770
to 1825, spinning production went from one spinner with one wheel and spindle who could
produce four skeins in a day, to one spinner with one spinning jack having 140 spindles, which
could produce 700 skeins in a day! One factor enabling this increase in production was the
change from hand-powered to steam- powered spinning machines in 1790.
Hand Spinning:
Historically, staple-fiber spinning is an ancient craft. Although the precise date of its origin has
yet to be known, there is archaeological evidence of ‘string skirts’ dating back around 20,000
years ago, to Paleolithic times. The early skill of spinning a thread from staple fibers, however, is
believed to have been in existence at least some 8000 to 10,000 years ago. The weaving of yarns
can be dated back to Neolithic times, around 6000 bc, and both skills are said to predate pottery,
which can be traced to around 5000 bc. It is likely that one of the earliest fibres to be spun was
wool, since sheep existed about 1 million years ago during the early Pleistocene period. The
domestication of sheep can be traced back to 9000 bc. in northern Iraq at Zam Chem Shanidar.

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Fig : Hand Spinning
The early spinning technique seems likely to have been accomplished without the use of tools,
by stretching out a thin bunch of fibres with one hand (the attenuating action being referred to as
drawing) while twisting together the fibres of the attenuated length between the fingers of the
other hand. To gain more twist the yarn would then be fastened to a stone – called a whorl –
which was twirled by hand and allowed to drop vertically, thereby generating the twisting torque.
With the yarn now aligned with the axis of rotation, the torque inserts the twist into it. This may
be classed as ‘on-axis twisting’.
It is also possible that the first stage of the twisting process was more easily achieved by rolling
the attenuated length between the outside of the spinner’s thigh and the palm of the hand used to
insert the twist.
Along with the development of the twisting device an improvement in the handling of the fibre
mass during the stretching out for twisting was needed.
Modern Day Hand Spinning
Spinning has come a long way from the days when workers used nothing but drop spindles. In
today's modern society and the art of spinning, spinners have a wide range of choices in the types
of spinning wheels they want to use. There are even spinning wheels for beginners and those
who are more advanced in spinning techniques; meaning you can upgrade from a Saxony Wheel
to the Great Wheel once you get the hands on experience of spinning for the first time and
mastering the art. As you can see, the Saxony Wheel is for beginners.
Hand spinning in today's modern times includes learning the different techniques associated with
spinning. Techniques include such things as drafting the fibers. As a beginner, you will be
introduced to the techniques of the Inch Worm, the Long Draw, the Worsted and spinning from
the fold. You will no doubt learn about plying as well. Plying is nothing more than twisting two
or more single strands of fiber together. In spinning terminology, double threads are called s-
twists, while single ply threads are known as the z-twists. Another aspect of spinning and one
you will have to decide to use or not is that of spinning in the grease, which means deciding to
spin wool fibers before or after they have been washed and cleaned. However, it is recommended
that when working with fine, delicate yarn, it is best to spin in grease. The lanolin in the material
being spun may be a bit messy and oily to work with, but handling of the lanolin coated threads
will soften the spinner's hands.

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Hand Spinning vs. Industrial Spinning
As history points out, in the past spinning was done by hand and out of a necessity. The tedious
labor was performed by almost every household in society. Machines and tools were set up
within the homes to prepare for those days of spinning. Everything associated with spinning,
from raising the animals for sheering and raising crops of cotton and silk as in China, it was a
family thing, involving everyone. The work was hard, long and tedious as family members went
about doing their part in producing cloth from scratch. This was the only way to create blankets
and such before industrial spinning came about, which made the labor of spinning a lot easier on
families. Industrial spinning was less time consuming. Factories began producing cloth faster
than what homespun could produce, making their product more economical. However, quality
workmanship remained high on the mark among those individuals who stayed with their craft of
home spinning.
The Spinning Wheel:
Although a precise date has yet to be determined, it is believed that it was within the
geographical region of either India, China or Persia (now Iran) linked to the Eastern wool, cotton
and silk trade, during the period 500–1000 ad, that the spinning wheel was invented. With this
system the spindle is switched from vertical rotation and secured to rotate in the horizontal
position. The whorl is replaced by a pulley wheel, which effectively is a thick whorl with a
groove cut into its peripheral surface.
Fig : Spinning Wheel
Metal spinning
Metal spinning can be traced back thousands of years. The first pictorial evidence is in the tomb
of fourth century Egyptian pharaoh Petosiris, which features an illustration of two men operating
an ancient lathe. Literary evidence points to earlier development as well: Egyptians describe
using hand bows to spin metal, stone and wood. Further east, ancient Chinese and Indian sources
also reveal an intimate knowledge of lathe work and hand bows for spinning. Archaeologists
encounter difficulty in uncovering specific lathe evidence because many of these materials don’t
survive, but literary descriptions incontrovertibly point to spinning as a worldwide familiar
technique.

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Fig : Metal Spinning
Ancient Woodcarving
Ancient Egyptian lathes were very simple and required two people to operate them. Two wooden
posts served as the mount for a spindle lain horizontally. A rope looped around the spindle that
could be pulled in two directions, resulting in clockwise and anticlockwise spindle movement.
The work piece was attached to the spindle and a worker would chisel it as the spindle rotated.
The aforementioned carving in Petosiris tomb featured a different type of spinning machine,
which the carving situated the material and spindle vertically — there is some controversy over
whether this vertical alignment is due to Egyptian depiction or the device’s actual design. The
workman doing the turning used a pole attached to the spindle to turn it, while the other worker
used the chisel to carve it. Bows were later introduced to replace pole turning, making it easier
for the turner to turn more fluidly. Common machining materials in these early periods were
wood, amber, bronze and stone.
Industrial Scale Metal Spinning
The Industrial Revolution introduced motorized lathes at an industrial scale. Motorization
allowed spinning to occur much more rapidly. These faster lathes required tools that could
withstand the pressure high-velocity spinning could cause, but also expedited the process.
Industrial spinning became motorized quickly, increasing accuracy and swelling production
volume. These machines still required a relatively high level of human oversight to ensure
production schedules and stock.
When CNC machining systems became more common, CNC principles were applied to metal
spinning. Because lathe work could be performed in a fully automated manner, and “smart”
computers could be programmed to handle large runs, production-scale for CNC metal spinning
could be higher.
Advantages of Metal Spinning
Metal Spinning is one of the most important methods of metal fabrication. Ultimate Spinning
advises that you should consider spinning prior to incurring the high costs of stamping or
punching since the costs for these methods of producing a product could be exorbitant. A metal
spun prototype is your best solution.
By definition, metal spinning is a method of forming a flat metal disc on a lathe into many
shapes (See Shapes). Metal spinning is a must when you need a prototype, if tooling costs are too

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high, quantities are low, time to market is important, tolerances are not primary (can hold +/-
.005), and there are budget restrictions.
Our process of metal spinning usually results in higher quality and lower costs, when compared
to stamping, deep drawing, or die casting.
Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny:
The use of the spinning wheel for the two-stage yarn production process spread throughout
Europe and was the method widely employed for producing cotton yarns and yarns from short
wools up until 1764, when the demand for increased yarn production led to the invention of the
‘spinning jenny’ by James Hargreaves, a British weaver from the town of Blackburn in northern
England. It is interesting that it was a weaver who effectively moved the spinning process
towards an industrial scale. At the time, the growing demand for spun yarns was a result of
another weaver’s invention – John Kay’s ‘flying shuttle’. This greatly increased the rate of
woven cloth production on the handloom.
Fig : Spinning Jenny
The Saxon Wheel:
The spinning of long fibers, including flax and hemp, was somewhat more cumbersome on the
simple spinning wheel, largely because long fibres are usually much coarser and therefore the
yarns spun with them are also much coarser. Consequently, not only would drafting with one
hand while turning the large wheel with the other be more difficult, but the amount of yarn that
could be would onto the spindle would be much smaller. The development which overcame
these disadvantages, and also led to the concept of a continuous spinning process, was called the
long-fibre wheel or the Saxon wheel. Although Leonardo da Vinci is said to have first depicted
the concept on paper, it is Johan Jurgen, a wood-carver from Brunswick, who is claimed to have
invented the system in 1530, after da Vinci’s death in 1519. With this system a foot treadle was
used to rotate the large wheel so that both hands could be used for drafting while twisting and
twisting and winding occurred as combined actions. Hence spinning could become continuous if
the prepared fibre could be continuously attached to the yarn length being formed by twisting.
The development of this latter requirement came later, so let us first consider the mechanism of
combined twisting and winding on the Saxon wheel.

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Fig : Saxon Wheel
Arkwright’s Water Frame:
The first device for replacing the manual skill of hand drafting is attributable to Lewis Paul who
obtained a patent in 1738 for the mechanism of roller drafting. Coupling the idea of roller
drafting with the flyer and spindle combination, in 1769, five years after Hargreaves’ spinning
jenny, Richard Arkwright developed the first technically powered spinning machine, called the
water frame. It was initially meant to be man-powered and was then called the spinning frame,
but being too large to operate by hand the use of horses was experimented with and subsequently
discarded for the power of the water wheel. The two important advancements that the water
frame contributed to spinning development were the application of roller drafting and a
modification to the winding of yarns by a flyer-spindle device.
Fig : Arkwright’s Water Frame
Crompton’s Spinning Mule:
Following the development of the water frame, Samuel Crompton in 1779 invented the spinning
mule, so called because it was a combination of the spinning jenny and the water frame. The
principle of the spindle-drafting action was retained from the spinning jenny but the positions of
the roving feed and rotating spindles were interchanged. Spindle-drafting was now obtained by
the movement of the carriage housing the rotating spindles. The roving packages were mounted
onto a creel and the rovings fed by rollers into the drafting zone, and the machine was powered
by the mechanical means of the day.

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Fig : Spinning Mule
The mule spinning process enabled large-scale manufacture of fine and coarse yarns, as a single
operator could tend up to 1000 spindles. In the 1830s the ‘self-acting’ mule was developed. It
was called ‘self-acting’ because it provided a mechanical means for automating the carriage
movements (spindle drafting and winding), and synchronizing them with the roving feed by the
rollers. Mules, each with 1320 spindles, became widely used for spinning fine yarns from cotton
and wool. The mule yarn was a fine, strong but soft yarn which could be used to produce all
kinds of fabrics. The versatility of mule yarns made this method of spinning the most common
from 1790 until about 1900; the process is still used today to produce fine yarns from specialty
fibers such as cashmere, mohair, alpaca, angora, etc.
The History of Electro spinning :
In the late 1500s Sir. William Gilbert set out to describe the behavior of magnetic and
electrostatic phenomena. He observed that when a suitably electrically charged piece of amber
was brought near a droplet of water it would form a cone shape and small droplets would be
ejected from the tip of the cone: this is the first recorded observation of electro spraying.
The process of electro spinning was patented by J.F Cooley in February 1902 (U.S. Patent
692,631) and by W.J. Morton in July 1902 (U.S. Patent 705,691).
In 1914 John Zeleny, published work on the behavior of fluid droplets at the end of metal
capillaries. His effort began the attempt to mathematically model the behavior of fluids under
electrostatic forces.
Further developments toward commercialization were made by Anton Formhals, and described
in a sequence of patents from 1934 (U.S. Patent 1,975,504) to 1944 (U.S. Patent 2,349,950) for
the fabrication of textile yarns. Electro spinning from a melt rather than a solution was patented
by C.L Norton in 1936 (U.S. Patent 2,048,651) using an air-blast to assist fibre formation.
In 1938 N.D Rozenblum and I.V Petryanov-Sokolov, working in Prof. N.A. Fuks' group at the
Aerosol Laboratory of the L.Ya Karpov Institute in the USSR, generated electrospun fibres ,
which they developed into filter materials known as "Petryanov filters". By 1939, this work had
led to the establishment of a factory in Tver' for the manufacture of electro spun smoke filter
elements for gas masks. The material, dubbed BF (Battlefield Filter) was spun from cellulose
acetate in a solvent mixture of dichloromethane and ethanol. By the 1960s output of spun
filtration material was claimed as 20 million m2 per annum.

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Between 1964 and 1969 Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor produced the theoretical underpinning of
electrospinning. Taylor’s work contributed to electrospinning by mathematically modelling the
shape of the cone formed by the fluid droplet under the effect of an electric field; this
characteristic droplet shape is now known as the Taylor cone. He further worked with J. R.
Melcher to develop the “leaky dielectric model” for conducting fluids.
In the early 1990s several research groups (notably that of Reneker who popularised the name
electrospinning for the process) demonstrated that many organic polymers could be electrospun
into nanofibers. Since then, the number of publications about electrospinning has been increasing
exponentially every year.
Since 1995 there have been further theoretical developments of the driving mechanisms of the
electrospinning process. Reznik et al. (2004) describes extensive work on the shape of the Taylor
cone and the subsequent ejection of a fluid jet. The work by Hohman et al. (2001) investigates
the relative growth rates of the numerous proposed instabilities in an electrically forced jet once
in flight. Also important has been work by Yarin et al. (2001) endeavouring to describe the most
important instability to the electrospinning process, the bending (whipping) instability.
Friction spinning
In 1973, Austrians DrErnstFehrer, by the revelation of the non-woven fabric processing methods,
proposed the concept of friction spinning, and patented. In 1974, Fehrer company successfully
developed the world's first friction spinning machine - DREF-type. In 1975, DREF-2 friction
spinning machine for the first time on display at the International Textile Machinery Fair. , The
company launched the DREF-3DREF2000DREF3000D types of products.
Almost at the same time, a number of countries, including China, the United Kingdom,
Czechoslovakia, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, are the distinctive research and testing, friction
spinning technology is improving daily.
China in the 1980s, there Zhejiang, Shanghai, Tianjin, Shandong and other relevant research
institutions and private-sector experts, friction spinning machines and related technology
research and development, and has made some progress. R & D and manufacturing a number of
machine can be used for actual production. The most representative the Hangzhou of Mr. Jiang
Baishen leadership developed FS series friction spinning machine, waste textile engineering at
the time were all the rage. However, due to the lack of product development efforts of the
friction spinning line, then the low level of industrialization, coupled with very low labor costs.
Cause is the introduction of equipment and independent production equipment, the prevalence of
single yarn products, lack of profitability of the embarrassing situation. Friction spinning
technology once been ignored.
With the rapid promotion of China's national strength, popular around the world. Aramid fiber
and functional fiber continues to be exploited, the personality full friction spinning technology
has finally ushered in the spring. The friction spinning into yarn and yarn style, the achievements
of other spinning irreplaceable in the form of characteristics.
Currently, only a handful of domestic product friction spinning machine manufacturers, the more
representative is the Dafeng City laborers friction Textile Machinery Factory R & D and
production MFS1000-6 type friction spinning machines. A more practical, higher profitability
friction spinning models.

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Fig: Friction spinning
Roller Spinning
Lewis Paul and John Wyatt patented their Roller Spinning machine in 1738. This machine had
two sets of rollers which travelled at different speeds. This drew out a sliver of wool to the right
thickness before spinning it.
By 1741 this machine, powered by donkeys, was being used in a mill in Birmingham. Soon
afterwards Wyatt and Paul went bankrupt. However, five of their machines were purchased by a
man called Cave who installed them in his new factory in Northampton. This was the first
cotton-spinning mill in history, but the Roller Spinning machine proved to be unreliable, and no
one else followed Cave's example.
Paul and Wyatt continued to try and improve their Roller Spinning machine and a second patent
was taken out in 1758. The machine failed to sell but Richard Arkwright did use the ideas it
contained to help him design his water frame.
Fig : Roller Spinning

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The ring spinning
The ring spinning machine was invented by an American named Thorp in 1828, and Jenk –
another American – added the traveler rotating around the ring in 1830. In the intervening period
of more than 170 years the ring spinning machine has undergone considerable modification in
detail, but the basic concept has remained the same. For many years any noteworthy further
development hardly seemed possible, yet a significant process of evolution took place during this
time. The productivity of the ring spinning machine has increased by 40% since the late
nineteen-seventies. This has been achieved by:
 using smaller rings and cop formats
 introducing piecing in the winding department
 substantial improvements in rings and travelers.
Fig : Ring Spinning
Rotor Spinning:
The productivity limitation of the ring spinning system was recognized long before the
commercial introduction of rotor spinning in 1967. In ring spinning, the twist insertion rate is
dependent on the rotational speed of the yarn package. This is so because of the continuity of the
fibre flow during spinning. Numerous attempts have been made since before the end of the 19th
century, particularly since the 1950s, to introduce a break into the fibre flow so that only the yarn
end needs to be rotated to insert twist. Very high twisting speeds can thus be achieved. In
addition, by separating twisting from package winding, there will be much more flexibility in the
form and size of the yarn package built on the spinning machine. This increases the efficiency of
both the spinning machine and of subsequent processes. Rotor spinning was the first such new
technology to become commercially successful and it is the second most widely used yarn
production method after ring spinning.
Developments in rotor spinning include the use of longer machines. Additionally, there is
interest in potentially using rotor technology to produce core yarns and using additional
components to create effect yarns.

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Fig : Rotor Spinnig
Twist Spinning Methods:
Open-end Spinning Method:
Open-end spinning also referred to as O.E. spinning or break spinning is a process in which the
input material to the spinning system is highly drafted, ideally to the individual fibre state. The
individual fibres are subsequently collected onto the tail end of a seed yarn (i.e. the open end)
that is rotated to twist the fibers into the yarn structure and thereby form a new length of yarn.
The spinning is continuous as the input material is continuously fed and fibres are continuously
collected onto the open end of a previously spun length. Currently two techniques employ the
O.E. method commercially, namely rotor spinning and friction spinning. Both use a rotating
roller having angled points projecting from their peripheral surface to remove a small number of
individual fibres at a time and transport them to a collecting surface holding the yarn tail.
Fig : Open end spinning

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Friction Spinning:
Friction spinning is an open end spinning technique. Instead of using a rotor, two friction rollers
are used to collect the opened-up fibres and twist them into the yarn.
Fig : Friction spinning
The fibres are fed in sliver form and opened by a carding roller. The opened fibres are blown off
the carding roller by an air current and transported to the nip area of two perforated friction
drums. The fibres are drawn onto the surfaces of the friction drums by air suction. The two
friction drums rotate in the same direction and because of the friction between the fibre strand
and the two drum surfaces, twist is inserted into the fibre strand. The yarn is withdrawn in the
direction parallel to the friction drum axis and delivered to a package forming unit.
Self-twist Spinning Method:
Often two yarns are twisted together, termed doubling or plying, in order to improve yarn
properties, in particular yarn evenness, or to overcome downstream processing difficulties, for
example in weaving worsted fabric where the warp yarns are not sized5 and therefore a low yarn
hairiness and high abrasion resistance are important. Because of the cost issue of an additional
processing stage (i.e. doubling) various techniques have been developed which simulate a two-
fold yarn using the ring spinning method.
The self-twist spinning method provides a concept whereby two strands can be twisted and plied
in a single-stage process to give a torque-balanced two-fold yarn suitable for knitting. The
method is based on the false-twist principle.
Fig : Self-twist Spinning

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Wrap Spinning Methods:
Wrap spinning is a yarn formation process in which a twistless staple fibre strand is wrapped by
a continuous binder. The process is carried out on a hollow spindle machine. The hollow spindle
was invented by DSO ‘Textil’ in Bulgaria. The first wrap spinning machine was introduced in
the 1979 ITMA.
Wrap spinning is highly productive and suitable for a wide range of yarn linear densities.Yarn
delivery speeds of up to 300mmin-1 are possible. Because the binder is normally very fine, each
binder bobbin can last many hours, enabling the pro-duction of large yarn packages without
piecing. Because the staple core is composed of parallel fibres with no twist, the yarn has a high
bulk, good cover and very low hairiness. The main limitation of wrap spinning is that it is only
suitable for the production of multi component yarns. The binder can be expensive, increasing
the yarn cost.
Besides the use of twist to consolidate the drafted ribbon of parallel fibres that constitutes a spun
structure, surface fibres protruding from the ribbon or a continuous filament (or filaments) can be
made to wrap (or bind) the fibre assembly to form a yarn with usable strength.
Surface Fibre Wrapping:
Two techniques are used: friction spinning (which is discussed before) and air-jet spinning.
Air-jet Spinning:
Air-jet spinning technology was first introduced by Du Pont in 1963, but it has only been made
commercially successful by Murata since 1980. Du Pont used only one jet, which produced a
low strength yarn. The Murata system has two opposing air jets, which improves the yarn
strength.
Fig : Air jet spinning
Air-jet spinning is used mainly for spinning from short staple fibres, especially cotton and
polyester blends.

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Twist less Spinning:
Numerous techniques have been developed to produce staple yarns without twisting so that the
limitations imposed by twisting devices, notably the ring traveler system, can be avoided and
production speed can be increased. Because of the unconventional yarn characteristics, these
techniques have not gained widespread acceptance commercially, but they do offer an alternative
and could be exploited to produce special products economically.
Most of these twist less methods use adhesives to hold the drafted staple fibre strand together.
They can produce low linear density yarns at a high speed. The adhesives may later be removed
after the fabric is made and the fibres are then bound by the interfiber forces imposed by fabric
constraints. This type of yarn has high covering power due to the untwisted yarn structure.
However, these processes mostly involve additional chemicals and require high power
consumption. The yarns can only be used for fabrics that offer good inter fiber forces.
Filament Wrapping:
Two techniques are used for wrapping a filament around a drafted ribbon of fibres to produce a
wrap-spun yarn.
Selfil Spinning:
This process is an adaptation of the Repco system, replacing one of the alternately twisted
strands with an alternately twisted filament (or filaments). The filament(s) and strand
subsequently ply together, and because the filament is finer than the strand it wraps the strand in
an alternating Z- and S-helix.
Hollow-spindle Spinning:
The hollow-spindle process is the more common filament wrapping technique. The essential
features of the spinning line are a roller drafting unit, a hollow spindle on which is mounted a
pirn of filaments, a pair of take-up rollers and a package build unit. The spindle has an integral
pin-type false twister located at its base (some systems have this located at the top).
Fig : hollow-spindle process

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Fascinated Spinning:
In fascinated spinning long staple sliver without twist introduced into a limited space and
subjected to a torque jet operating at right angles to the flow of the sliver thereby imparting a
false twist to the sliver. As the sliver exits the torque jet it rapidly untwists, and the outer fibres
tend to break away from the sliver and wrap around the inner sliver to give a strong yarn
consisting of mostly parallel fibres with some fibres tightly twisted around the outside.
Modern Spinning Methods and Developments:
Although ring spinning has the advantage over earlier systems of higher production speeds and
consequently reduced labour costs, the largest size of yarn package that could be built was
limited by the ring size. Further the ring size limited also the traveller speed and thereby the
spindle speed. This is because the frictional drag of the ring on the traveller can generate a high
temperature at the ring–traveller interface; such temperatures can be reached where the traveller
locally melts and central forces eject it from the ring. A significant amount of research and
development (R&D) has been invested in improving the design of the ring–traveller combination
and in the materials and surface coating that can be used to improve heat dissipation of the
traveller and increased traveller speed.4 However, the general consensus is that traveller speeds
are limited to 40 m min–1 and therefore spindle speeds and production speeds are restricted.
The limitation of the package size while operating at the highest possible spindle speed brought
with it increased labor cost for doffing and unwanted machine down-time during doffing.
Modern ring-spinning machines exhibit very sophisticated engineering developments which
circumvent many of these drawbacks, such as automated doffing and link-winding, so that larger
packages can be built from spinning bobbins on an attached re-winding machine.
Later Developments
The major development in spinning and lathe work in the Middle Ages was the introduction of
technology that allowed workers to continuously rotate materials. This technology was mainly
achieved by eliminating the bow, replacing it with a pedal. Working the pedal with one’s feet
freed the worker’s hands to control speed of rotation and focus on accuracy and precision. The
lathe unit also became more compact, manifesting as a small desk-shaped station for machining.
The worker stamped on the pedal, or foot treadle, which rotated a large fly wheel, resetting the
action of the treadle and allowed the worker to push down on it as a continuous action.
Viking and other societies did not develop this continuous action until later, although they did
use pedal-driven lathes. These lathes used poles to reset the treadle, but because this activity
reversed the rotation direction, chiseling could only occur during one motion. Polelathes were
easy to produce and very common, even up until the 20th Century.
Eventually, iron lathes were constructed for denser materials. These lathes varied in size but
worked similarly to the earlier wooden and copper lathes. Iron lathes could be made very precise,
creating delicate clock and watch parts.

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Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel, 1400-1800
Introduction
From the introduction of the spinning wheel to England during the later Middle Ages to its
eclipse by the powered spinning machine early in the nineteenth century, hand-spun yarn was
vital to the success of the textile industries that dominated English manufacturing. Indeed, hand
spinning – of wool, flax and ultimately cotton – became the principal income-generating activity
pursued by women. For many of those women, it was also an essential means of furnishing their
own families with textiles. Spinning straddled the boundary that has been erected by historians
between the monetized economy of commercial exchange and the non-monetized sphere of the
household. It was, at one and the same time, an economic and material foundation of England’s
rise to pre-eminence in the international trade in textiles, yet it was also crucial to self-
provisioning among rural households. It is no co-incidence, therefore, that in the course of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the word ‘spinster’ became the conventional term used in
English to designate an unmarried woman. Yet the history of spinning in the period has never
been the subject of a major study in its own right.
The absence of such a study has in recent years become increasingly anomalous. The huge
expansion of historical research into the economic, social and cultural history of late-medieval
and early-modern England has embraced many subjects that have to do with spinning, including
gender relations, consumption, fashion, material culture, technological innovation, household
economics, employment law, labour relations, trade, law enforcement, globalization and
economic policy making. Yet we still lack a study that focuses specifically on what was, by the
eighteenth century, the most common form of non-agricultural employment in England, let alone
a study integrating the insights and methodologies of all the new research in related fields that
touches on the subject.
Scope and objectives.
‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ aims to rectify this anomaly. Its objective is to
provide a comprehensive history of hand spinning in England between 1400 and 1800 that
approaches the subject from the whole range of relevant perspectives, treating it as a practice that
was at one and the same time material, technological, economic, commercial, legal, cultural,
gendered, and global. This will involve an approach that is multi-disciplinary, embracing
historical, literary, legal, technological and scientific approaches.
1. The material history of spinning
Fundamental to ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ is an assessment of the material
characteristics of the yarn employed in surviving examples of English cloth. Eighteenth-century
commentators insisted that the superiority of English spinning was crucial to the success of
English woolen textiles in overseas markets. Yet in social and economic history, spinning has
often been treated as a relatively unskilled activity, subject to none of the regulations regarding
apprenticeship and training designed to safeguard quality standards in skilled male occupations,
especially those that remained subject to guild controls. Addressing this issue will require study
of documentary sources (especially business and poor law records) to establish how spinners
were trained and how the specifications they were required to maintain were set and policed. But
it will also require study of surviving textiles and changes in the market for textiles, in order to

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establish the range of yarns produced and what was required to make them, in terms of skill,
time, equipment, raw materials, etc. Central will be an evaluation of what ‘quality’ meant in spun
yarn. Professor Styles is already familiar with these issues through his work on the history of
clothing.
2. The economic history of spinning
Jan de Vries has put forward the influential thesis that the Industrial Revolution was preceded by
an ‘industrious revolution’, which involved the re-allocation of labour within households towards
income-generating activities. De Vries offers a sophisticated and persuasive amplification of
older studies dealing with the rise of domestic industry in early-modern western Europe.
Essentially, his ‘industrious revolution’ is a story of radical re-allocation of domestic labour from
non-market to market production. Yet de Vries offers little in the way of chronology or
explanation, other than the lure of an ever-widening range of consumer goods during the later
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Spinning was, of course, one of the principal income-
generating activities undertaken by women and children in early-modern households. ‘Spinning
in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ will address this issue from the perspective of labour in
addition to the perspective of consumption. It will consider how the demand for spinning labour
changed from the later Middle Ages and why. Crucial to this will be an evaluation of the
interaction of the labour-saving effects of the spinning wheel and the increased demand for
spinning labour associated with the rise of lighter, less durable cloths made from long-staple
wool, often identified (in England at least) as ‘new draperies’.
3. The commercial history of spinning
The ways businesses organized the commercial supply of spun yarn exhibited wide variations,
both between industries dependent on different fibres (wool, flax, cotton), and within each of
those industries. Modes of organization of spinning labour ranged from spinners who operated as
independent producers, buying their own raw material and selling their own yarn, to putting-out
(verlag). Putting-out systems varied considerably. In the seventeenth-century worsted industries,
for example, they included the vertically integrated pattern characteristic of Essex, where master
manufacturers controlled the whole manufacturing process from combing through spinning to
weaving, but they also embraced the vertically disintegrated pattern found in nearby Norfolk,
where master weavers relied on yarn supplied by yarn masters who were specialists in organizing
spinning by women in country villages. Older studies tended to look for explanations for these
different forms of organization in tradition, local environmental factors, and the market for
credit, but the whole issue is central to recent theoretical debates in economics around
transaction costs and the emergence of firms. ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ will
address questions about the organization of spinning arising in both older and recent studies, but
the comprehensive nature of the project will allow it to give much more attention than recent
work to the varying requirements of the markets for the final woven product.
4. The legal history of spinning
The position of workers in English law was ambiguous. It had elements of status (as menial,
servant, artificer) and elements of contract. The ambiguity was especially marked in the case of
putting-out workers, and particularly so in the case of spinners, because they were predominantly
women. Insofar as their status was a contractual one, married women were femme covert,

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normally deemed incapable of making contracts in their own right. When disputes arose with
their employers over wages, the quality of work, or the ownership of materials, was it the
husband that was liable under contract law, or the woman as a menial servant under the laws
regulating service? The legal position of spinners raised issues that were at the heart of the
ambiguities inherent in English labour law. They were issues that came up repeatedly, because
spinning was associated with chronic tensions over wages, quality and embezzlement.
Nevertheless, differences of legal interpretation persisted until the demise of hand spinning in the
early nineteenth century. ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ will explore these issues in
order to extend our understanding of the legal position of women as workers.
5. The gendered history of spinning
It is conventionally assumed that spinning was almost exclusively women’s work before the
coming of the factory. It is generally accepted that spinning was one of that small core of low-
paid women’s employments that resisted the tendency towards male monopoly in many
occupations in the late Middle Ages, identified by some historians. Yet preliminary work for
‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ suggests that in the eighteenth century, at least, this
pattern did not apply universally. In some of the poorest, upland parts of the north of England
nearly a quarter of spinners were men. And in those lowland areas where spinning was almost
entirely confined to women, questions remain unanswered regarding the relative importance of
age, marital status, and husband’s occupation in determining which women spun. How typical,
for example, was the pattern found by Saito at Cardington, Bedfordshire, where it was older,
married women who were more likely to spin, while younger, unmarried women focused on
lacemaking? ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ aims to engage with the gendered
nature of spinning by asking not only why it was women who dominated spinning, but which
women. In answering those questions, the issue of how spinning fitted into the temporal
patterning (daily, seasonal, annual, and life-cycle) of different women’s lives will be crucial.
6. The cultural history of spinning
Spinning was not simply an economic and material activity. Spinning, and the equipment and
practices associated with it, became common metaphors in literature, art and everyday discourse
from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Spinster became the legal term for an unmarried
woman in the fifteenth century; the distaff came to symbolize womanhood in prose and poetry;
spinning wheels appear in paintings and caricatures signifying feminine domesticity. So
powerful was the cultural association between women and spinning that in the eighteenth century
many wealthy women took up spinning as a distinctively female domestic accomplishment,
despite the fact that they had no practical economic need to produce their own yarn, nor did
home-made yarn offer the kind of opportunities for display characteristic of female
accomplishments like embroidery or shellwork. ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ will
map and analyse the wider cultural uses of spinning, making use of the huge resource of
digitized images available through the British Museum and other art collections, and of digitized
printed works in English now available through Early English Books online, Eighteenth Century
Collections online, the Burney Collection of Newspapers, and the online collections of English
popular ballads hosted by the Bodleian Library Oxford and the University of California, Santa
Barbara.

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7. The technological history of spinning
The power spinning machine was the crucial new technology of Industrial Revolution, a key
innovation that constituted a model for the subsequent diffusion of factory-based manufacturing
to other industries. Historians of the Industrial Revolution have devoted great effort to explaining
this innovation, but have given much more attention to the new spinning technologies and their
inventors (James Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright, Samuel Crompton) than to the hand techniques
they superseded. Until recently, hand spinning has typically been dismissed as a low-productivity
bottleneck that needed to be overcome in the forward march of economic and technological
progress. Two issues arise which require further investigation. First, the technology of the hand
spinning wheel itself: why it was originally introduced into England in the late Middle Ages and
how it was subsequently adapted and refined for different textile fibres, so that by the eighteenth
century spinners were using a range of different, specialist wheels for short-staple wool, long-
staple wool, flax and cotton. Second, the context of hand processes within which the new,
mechanical techniques were developed in the first half of the eighteenth century (crucially by
Louis Paul and John Wyatt), particularly the question of why spinning cotton was already a focus
of mechanization in the 1730s, when cotton manufacture was limited in scale, rather than
spinning wool or flax which were much more widespread and economically significant.
8. The global history of spinning
England in the high Middle Ages was famous as a supplier of raw wool, not of cloth. Cloth
making for the international market, and the commercialized spinning of yarn on which it
depended, developed on a large scale only in the later Middle Ages. Subsequently the country
took up the manufacture of other kinds of internationally traded textiles – notably linens and
cottons. In the case of all these textiles, international standards were initially set not in England
but overseas, in continental Europe or, in the case of cottons, in India. The spinning wheel itself,
moreover, came to England from China or India, via continental Europe. The practice of
spinning in England between 1400 and 1800 was, therefore, inextricably linked with the way
spinning was practiced in other parts of the world. ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’
will inevitably, therefore, have to address the question of how information about the ways
spinning was practiced overseas was communicated to spinners in England in order that they
could successfully emulate and compete. Transferring knowledge to vast numbers of women in
rural villages was a different exercise from the more familiar process of communicating
expertise by skilled male migrants in urban settings that has been the focus of most studies of
technology transfer in early-modern Europe. But thinking about the history of spinning in a
global context requires more than simply the study of diffusion of techniques and competition in
product markets. It also requires engagement with the ways historians of other countries have
researched and understood hand spinning at particular times and in particular places. ‘Spinning
in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ will benefit intellectually from comparisons with hand
spinning and its histories in other times and places.
Existing scholarship in the field
Hand spinning in the three centuries before the Industrial Revolution has been the subject of
extensive historical research since Edward Baines wrote on the history of the cotton industry and
John James on the history of worsteds in the mid-nineteenth century. Most existing studies have
followed the pattern set by those early works, focusing on shortcomings in the supply of hand-

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spun yarn that in the course of the eighteenth century stimulated the transition to powered
spinning machinery housed in factories. These works are formulated in terms of a problem-
response model. The problem they identify is the bottleneck in textile (especially cotton textile)
production that resulted from the need for many times more spinners than weavers and the
consequent difficulty in securing, paying and controlling spinning labour as production
expanded. It is a bottleneck that is considered to have become especially acute after John Kay’s
invention of the wheel shuttle [later known as the flying shuttle] in 1733 speeded up weaving and
further increased the demand for yarn. This problem stimulated a response in the form of the
invention of the powered spinning machine.
Historians continue to write about hand spinning within this broad tradition. Recent debates have
concerned the implications of the proto-industrialization thesis for the supply of domestic
industrial labour, the nature of the advantage enjoyed by powered spinning machinery (more
intensive use of capital, or more intensive exploitation of labour), and the precise impact of
spinning machinery on prices for finished cloth.
At the same time, historians write about spinning in an associated but distinct tradition of
scholarship that places gender at the heart of its analysis. This tradition goes back to the work of
Alice Clark and Ivy Pinchbeck in the early twentieth century. It seeks to establish the history of
women’s labour force participation over many centuries and explain the disadvantageous terms
on which women participated. Intriguingly, in recent as well as in older studies of England,
spinning rarely figures prominently as a focus of research in its own right, despite its ubiquity as
women’s work.
It is these two traditions that continue to generate most historical scholarship relevant to
spinning, but not exclusively so. Spinning continues to be addressed in studies of textile history
which do not have industrialization as their central theme, while recent work by literary scholars
has begun to examine the cultural representation of women’s work in the early modern period.
Significance of ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’
The history of hand spinning is crucial to understanding the English Industrial Revolution, yet it
has previously been addressed in ways that are limited and narrow. Rather than treat hand
spinning, and specifically its shortcomings, only as a prelude to industrialization, ‘Spinning in
the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ aims to provide a rounded account of hand spinning in its own
right.
Two implications of this approach are especially important. First, ‘Spinning in the Era of the
Spinning Wheel’ will provide a fundamental re-assessment of English work patterns,
consumption patterns and living standards before the Industrial Revolution. Recent scholarship
in economic history has diminished the impact of early industrialization on economic growth.
One result has been the emergence of a more optimistic view of the achievements of the pre-
industrial English economy compared with many of its continental European neighbours,
especially its capacity to raise living standards. Spinning – the most common form of women’s
paid work – was crucial to this.
Second, ‘Spinning in the Era of the Spinning Wheel’ has the potential to offer new perspectives
on mechanical innovation in the textile industries in the Industrial Revolution. It does so
precisely because it does not treat hand spinning as a bottleneck to be overcome. It consequently

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addresses aspects of the subject, particularly those to do with the material and aesthetic
characteristics of yarn and cloth, that have often been ignored in previous studies.
The project has two unconventional aspects that are noteworthy. First, it crosses the conventional
boundaries between different kinds of scholarship, bringing together historical, literary, legal,
technological and scientific approaches. Second, it involves the combination of material and
documentary evidence, drawing on Professor Styles’ experience in working with museum
objects.
Conclusion:
Modern spinning technology has a number of advantages, over the ring spinning technology,
such as, increased spinning speed (2 to 10 times of the ring spinning speed), absence of spinning
preparatory machines, like, speed frames, draw frames (in case of very coarse counts), etc., as
well as, absence of certain, post spinning operations, like, cheese/ cone winding, etc., which are
needed, in case of ring spinning.
Because of the absence of some, preparatory and post spinning operations, as well as high output
per machine, Modern spinning (OERS) machines give a substantial, saving in labour cost.
State-of-the- art Modern spinning (OERS) machines are available with a high degree of
automation, such as, auto doffing, automatic yarn piecing, automatic sliver can change,
automatic yarn evenness control, automatic production and operating data recording, etc, as also,
centralized computer control. Indigenous machines have speed up to 80,000 rpm; also, they lack
most of automation features and are, by and large, manually controlled.
Modern spinning (OERS) machining give, a better regularity of yarn which has, better stretch
characteristics and, therefore, better suited to weaving, on high-speed automated looms.
The limitation, of Modern spinning (OERS)machines, are: high power consumption, at spinning
stage; lack of flexibility to take up various fibres/ blends and count ranges, with the same
configuration of machines; slightly lower strength of OERS yarns, difficultly in dyeing yarn of
dark shades etc.
Ring spinning is, the conventional technology, in vogue, for spinning of yarn from, cotton, wool,
spun silk, synthetic fibres and their blends, etc. With the threat from OERS technology, the ring
spinning technology has, also advanced, considerably, during the last decade. Spindle speeds
have gone upto20, 000 rpm. Automation has been introduced for doffing of full bobbins. The
latest development is, the linking of machines with, winding machines, in which, the full
bobbins, doffed by the auto-doffer, are directly fed to the cone winding machine, attached at the
end of the ring frame. Automatic creeling of roving bobbins and roving feed stop motion, have,
also, been introduced. These developments have brought about a considerable degree of
advancement in the ring spinning technology. However, these developments could not be a threat
to OERS, due to limitation in, increase of speed of Ring Spinning.
The latest addition, to the spinning technology, is the Air jet spinning technology, which was
introduced, in the year 1980. The machine spins, cotton, synthetics, and their blends, in the count
range of, 10s to 80s. The productivity for fine counts is, about, 15 to 20 times, higher than the
ring spinning. The jet spin yarns are more uniform, but weaker in strength, than ring spun yarn,
but stronger than the open-end spun yarn. Yarn cleaners are provided at each spinning unit,
which give very uniform yarn. Fully automated version of air jet machines is available, with an
auto-doffer, for change of full packages and auto-piecer for mending end breaks. The machines
can be attached with computerized production information system and package transfer system,

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for storing the full packages. The jet spun yarn finds, only limited applications, due to harsh feel
and is found to be, more suitable, for spinning, synthetic fibres and thier blends with cotton.
When comparing the OERS technology, with other contemporary spinning technologies, the,
following, limitations of, OERS machines and Open-End Rotor Spun Yarns, are brought out:
 Machines cap spin economically, in the count range of, 1.5s to about 40's, only,
 Lower tensile strenght of yarn, by 15-20%, than ring spun yarns,
 Higher twist in yarn, by about 10-15%, because of which.there is a limitation in use of
OERS yarn, in fabrics, requiring higher absorbancy of water, like, towelling and rough
feel of OERS yarn, which results in production of, comparatively, harsher grey fabrics,
which require different treatment in finishing
 Limitations in use of Open-End Rotor Spun Yarn, for industrial and other such end uses,
due to lower tensile strength.
 Difficulty in dyeing OERS yarn; to dark shades because of their open structure.
 Higher power consumption at spinning stage vis-a-vis ring spinning.
 Lack of versatility in handling various count ranges by a given configuration of
machines. Rotor diameter and material of construction, require, change, as a result of
change in count range and fibre/blend, to be spun.
 High capital cost of open-end spinning machines, particularly, state of the art machines,
imported from general currency areas.