The article tells about what spinning is, how it was spun in the old days, how the first spinning tools - the spindle and whorl - were improved - when and by whom the first spinning machines were invented. And, finally, what evolution have they 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 obtain a long and strong thread is called spinning.
These threads, connected several times, were woven together - but not only to give the future fabric a denser texture. Single, originally spun threads were short, and when they were twisted, an even and strong yarn of greater length appeared.
Each type of yarn, whether folded into two or more strands, has been used in spinning or weaving.
Whether weaving the first ropes in the Stone Age, or pulling the finest 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 one whole.
Roleropes in civilization, no matter how ridiculous it may sound in our time, is difficult to overestimate. And the role of clothing in the history of mankind is even greater. Both yarn and thread became the basis of clothing, with the help of which people were able to populate the various climatic zones of the globe.
First technologies
One of the most primitive ways in the history of spinning, which was invented by mankind - the friction (twisting) of the 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 vegetable waste, or by combing and then washing animal hair. This prepared fiber was called tow.
What is spinning among ancient people? The process looked like this: with the left hand, a ribbon of fiber pulled out from a ball of tow (it was also called a roving) was fed, which was picked up by the right hand and, pressing it to the knee, twisted it into a thread with the palm of the hand.
This occupation was considered, of course, primordially female: only their thin fingers could cope with the fluffy ends of the scraps of fibers, twisting them together - tying the ends of the broken threads into knots subsequently led to the roughness and poor quality of the fabric then made.
Spinning this, although it was a rather tedious, time-consuming process, required accuracy and concentration from the spinner.
Spindle
In ancient Egypt, the fibers were placed not on the knee, but on a stone of a suitable shape, and the Greeks used a piece of tile for this purpose.
Ancient, one offaithful companions of man for many centuries, became a spindle - a device for spinning. The first mention of this device dates back to the 4th 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 become the birthplace of cotton production.
It is easiest to imagine the spindle as a stick, pointed upwards, with a thickening directed downwards. Sometimes this stick had no thickening and was double pointed.
The spindle was most often made of birch, its length ranged from 20 to 80 centimeters.
It allowed not only to twist the fibers into a thread, but also to wind it up immediately.
Subsequently, the spindle was transformed into a spindle top, in which it was set in motion by a wheel rotated first 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 self-spinning wheel) appear. It used an improved flywheel spindle. In such a spindle, the thread passed through a rod that was hollow inside and, thrown over a special hook, was immediately wound onto a spool. The whole mechanism was driven by a pedal.
Whirlpool
The spindle whorl was suspended from the very first spindle. It was a weight in the form of a small disk with a hole in the middle - to make the spindle heavier and more securely attach yarn to it.
Sometimes the thread doesn'tbroke off, the whorl was placed in some vessel (cup) or half a coconut, as was done in India.
The most ancient spindle whorls found by archaeologists in the vastness of Russia date back to the 10th century. Spindles along with whorls were traditionally made by a father for his daughter or a boyfriend for his girlfriend. Hence the inscriptions on them with names ("Martynya" - in Veliky Novgorod, "Young" - in Old Ryazan, "Babino Pryaslene" - in Vitebsk, etc.)
It is known that Chinese spindle whorls became the prototype of the first coins with a square hole in the center.
Development of spinning
For six thousand years, people have been making threads and yarns. With each new century, something new is introduced into this process, some improvements.
The history of spinning itself is quite interesting: the ancient Egyptians spun flax using the so-called hanging spindle, in ancient India the spindle with a support method was practiced - this was the only way to make the finest thread from cotton. In Europe, the "support" spindle began to be used only in the XIV century.
Then the spindle was aligned with the winding. But this happened only in the 15th century. A century later, a belt mechanism was invented, and after it, a pedal, which freed the right hand of the spinner (or spinner).
A more productive multi-spindle machine with many winding flyers and a manual drive was invented by the brilliant Leonardo da Vinci in 1490.
But machine spinning humanity has become activeapply only to the middle of the XVIII century. An improved spinning machine that produced six times as much 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 wheel" (sometimes it was called "Jenny spinner"). Allegedly true to tradition, the engineer named the "newest" spindle in honor of one of his daughters or wife. The strange thing about this story was that none of the women in his family bore the name Jenny.
Modern spinning
The twentieth century began with a continuous ring spinning machine, in which the roving entered the exhaust mechanism - a special cob on a spindle. Then the thread was leveled and wound on spools. At that time, these were the maximum productivity mechanisms, which made it possible to establish large-scale spinning and weaving production.
Today, spinning is a spinning machine developed in the 60s of the last century by the joint efforts of engineers from the USSR and Czechoslovakia. They could no longer only fold the fibers, track their thickening and form threads, but also wind them with the help of an even more productive pneumomechanism.