ABSTRACT
Before the invention of the spinning-jenny in the eighteenth century, Europe used three different tools for spinning. The oldest of these was the spindle with distaff which had been in use since Neolithic times and was spread over many parts of the world. The first time-saving improvement, the ‘great wheel’, appeared in the Middle Ages, and the third tool, the small wheel with flyer, an ingenious invention, a couple of hundred years later. 1 It was improved some time after by the addition of a treadle.
