The spinning jenny was still hand-powered, but had multiple spindles. Even with advances in design, spinning wheels only allowed workers to produce one spool of thread at a time. The importance of the spinning jenny lay in its efficiency. Hargreaves may have simply improved on a design by Thomas High and made the concept more widespread. These are probably not true: the name “jenny” was actually from a slang word for “engine.” There is also some debate about the role of other people in the invention of the machine. Another story claims that he named the machine after either his wife or daughter. For example, one story claims Hargreaves had the idea for his machine when his daughter knocked over a spinning wheel and he watched the spindle roll across the floor. There are some legends associated with the invention of the spinning jenny. Hargreaves was attempting to make it easier to produce more yarn when he designed the spinning jenny. Spinners struggled to keep up with the demand for cotton yarn. ![]() But in the early eighteenth century, cotton surged in popularity. For many years, the main cloth produced in Europe was wool. He was a spinner himself with little education and little money, but a large family. James Hargreaves, a carpenter and weaver from Oswaldtwistle, England, is generally given credit for inventing the spinning jenny in the eighteenth century. In addition to the Bible, spinning wheels show up in the well-known story of “Sleeping Beauty,” first found in a French work the Greek and Roman tale about Arachne, the talented spinner/weaver who boasts that she is more skillful than Athena (or Minerva) and the German fairytale “Rumpelstiltskin” in which a girl’s father claims she can spin straw into gold. Perhaps because of its prevalence in daily life, spinning wheels frequently appear in stories and legends. The sixteenth century also saw the invention of the flyer, a device that automatically twisted the yarn. This meant both of the spinner’s hands were free. Instead of turning the wheel by hand, the spinner would operate it using a foot treadle. The Saxon wheel wound the yarn onto a bobbin and included a stationary rod to hold the fiber. The spinner rotated a large wheel with his/her right hand while holding the piece of fiber in his/her left hand.Īt the beginning of the sixteenth century, Europeans began using the Saxon wheel. Early spinning wheels had a horizontally mounted spindle and a large wheel. They were likely invented in India and introduced to Europe in the High Middle Ages. Spinning wheels, the first step in mechanizing this process, have existed for centuries and perhaps millennia. ![]() The spinner would then twist the fibers together into a single strand and wind them onto a spindle. The process involved using a stick to draw individual fibers out of a piece of wool. ![]() ![]() Although the process was improved in the sixteenth century by the Saxon wheel and the flyer, the most significant changes to the craft were brought about by inventions in the eighteenth century, when every portion of the textile industry struggled to keep up with the demand for cotton.īefore the Middle Ages, Europeans used hand spinning to turn fiber into thread or yarn. The mechanization of spinning in Europe began when spinning wheels arrived from another continent in the High Middle Ages. It decreased production costs, encouraged the movement of textile production into factories, and eventually led to more advanced technologies, such as Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule. Designed by James Hargreaves in 1764 or 1765, the spinning jenny was one of the crucial inventions in the textile industry during the Industrial Revolution.
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