The article tells about what spinning is, how it was spun in the old days, how the first spinning tools - spindle and spindle - were improved - when and by whom the first spinning machines were invented. And finally, what evolution they have undergone to our time.
Meaning of the word “spinning”
As the dictionary tells us, the process of longitudinal folding and spiral twisting of individual fibers to produce a long and strong thread is called spinning.
Several times these threads were woven together, but not only to give the future fabric a denser texture. The single, initially spun yarns were short, and when they were twisted, an even and strong yarn of a greater length appeared.
Each type of yarn, whether it was folded into two or more threads, was used in spinning or weaving.
Whether weaving the first ropes in the Stone Age, or drawing the thinnest threads with the help of modern machines, they have a common principle: spinning is what made it possible to weave short and scattered fibers into a single whole.
The role of the rope in civilization, no matter how ridiculous it may sound in our time, can hardly be overestimated. And the role of clothing in the history of mankind is even greater. Both yarn and threads became the basis of clothing with which people were able to populate the diverse climatic zones of the globe.
First technology
One of the most primitive ways in the history of spinning that mankind has invented is friction (twisting) of fibers between the palms of the hands or one palm on the knee.
By the way, it was necessary to prepare for spinning by cleaning flax or hemp fibers from plant wastes, or combing and then washing the animal’s hair. This prepared fiber was called tow.
What is spinning in ancient people? The process looked like this: with the left hand, a ribbon of fiber pulled out from a tow ball (it was also called the roving) was fed, which was picked up by the right hand and, pressing it to the knee, twisted it with a palm into a thread.
This occupation was considered, of course, primordially female: only their thin fingers could cope with the fluffy ends of fragments of fibers, twisting them together - the binding to the nodes of the ends of dangling threads subsequently led to the rudeness and poor quality of the fabric then manufactured.
Spinning, although it was a rather boring, time-consuming process, required straightness and concentration from the spin.
Spindle
In ancient Egypt, fibers were not laid on a knee, but on a stone of a suitable shape, and the Greeks used a piece of tile for this purpose.
The oldest, one of the faithful companions of man for many centuries, has become the spindle - a device for spinning. The first mention of this device dates back to the IV millennium BC. e. (Egypt, Mesopotamia).
In ancient Egypt, Greece, India, spinning even developed into an independent craft, which allowed the latter country, for example, to subsequently become the homeland of cotton production.
The easiest way to imagine a spindle is in the form of a stick, pointed up, with a thickening directed downward. Sometimes this wand did not have a thickening and was double-pointed.
The spindle was made most often from birch, its length ranged from 20 to 80 centimeters.
It allowed not only to twist the fibers into a thread, but also to rewind it immediately.
Subsequently, the spindle was transformed into a spindle top, in which it was driven by a wheel, first rotated by hand, and then by inertia. Later, this device was transformed into a foot belt drive.
Only in the 16th century did a spinning wheel (or a spinning wheel) appear. It used an advanced flyer spindle. In such a spindle, the thread passed through the hollow inside the rod and, thrown over a special hook, immediately wound on a bobbin. The whole mechanism was driven by a pedal.
Spindle
A spindle was hung from the very first spindle. It was a small weight in the form of a small disk with a hole in the middle - to make the spindle heavier and more secure the yarn on it.
Sometimes, so that the thread does not break, the spindle was placed in a bowl (cup) or in a half of a coconut, as was done in India.
The most ancient spindle-wheels found by archaeologists in the vastness of Russia are dated to the 10th century. Spindles along with spindle-wheels were traditionally made by a father for his daughter or a guy for his girlfriend. Hence the inscriptions on them with names (“Martynia” - in Veliky Novgorod, “Molodilo” - in Old Ryazan, “Babin Spinner” - in Vitebsk, etc.).
It is known that the Chinese spindle was the prototype of the first coins with a square hole in the center.
Spinning development
For six thousand years now, people have been making threads and yarns. With each new century, something new is introduced into this process, some improvements.
The spinning history itself is quite interesting: the ancient Egyptians spun linen with the help of the so-called hanging spindle, in ancient India the spindle method with support was practiced - only this way it was possible to make the thinnest thread from cotton. In Europe, the "support" spindle began to be used only in the XIV century.
Then the spindle combined with winding. But this only happened in the 15th century. A century later, a belt mechanism was invented, and after it - a pedal that released the right hand of a spinner (or spinner).
A more productive multi-threaded machine with many winding flyers and a manual drive was invented by the ingenious Leonardo da Vinci in 1490.
But mankind began to actively use machine spinning only in the middle of the 18th century. An improved spinning machine, which produced six times more yarn and became the beginning of the industrial process, was invented by the English inventor James Hargreaves in 1767. According to legend, the machine was called "Jenny's spinning wheels" (sometimes it was called "Jenny-spinning"). Allegedly faithful to the tradition, the engineer named the “newest” spindle in honor of one of the daughters or wife. The strange thing about this story was that not one of the women in his family bore the name of Jenny.
Modern spinning
The twentieth century began with a ring spinning machine of continuous operation, in which the roving entered the exhaust mechanism - a special spad on the spindle. Then the thread was aligned and wound around the spools. At that time, these were the maximum productivity mechanisms allowing to establish large spinning and weaving industries.
Nowadays, spinning is a machine without strands, developed in the 60s of the last century by the joint efforts of engineers from the USSR and Czechoslovakia. They could not only fold the fibers, track their thickening and form the threads, but also wind them with an even more productive pneumomechanism.