Since the defect of low efficiency of hand spindle spinning became more obvious. Someone must create a new tool to replace it, and therefore spinning wheel came into being.

The spindle whorl is the oldest efficient device for the production of yarn, its technical features may have evolved from the spindle-whorl. Two technical preconditions for the invention of the spindle-wheel have already presented in Shang China. Firstly, people were already familiar with the operation and rotation of the reel used in silk-reeling. They certainly knew how to wind a skein from the rotary silk-reek on to small spools, and they knew how to double silk thread. Secondly, wheels for vehicles had been introduced to China from the ancient Near East or western Asia in the middle of the-2^nd millennium, so by the Chou period, the Chinese must have had considerable experience in wheel.

Despite its name, which means “spinning (of fibers), the Chinese spindle-wheel was not originally used for spinning, but doubling and quelling of silk threads, the processes which improve the quality of silk to be used in weaving , but all the same, do not transform raw material into yarn.

If the vertically worked hand-spindle with its whorl is suspended horizontally between two short uprights so that it can revolve, it is called a spindle-wheel. The spindle was mechanized, with the whorl acting as a pulley, having a groove cut into it take the driving-belt. At the other end of a bas-board are two long uprights supporting the axle of the driving-wheel, which the spinner rotates by a crank held in the right hand. The driving-wheel itself could have been constructed in several ways, but from pictorial evidence, it tends to be shown as a wheel with spokes terminating in grooved blocks on which the driving-belt was carried. These blocks could be connected to one another on either side by a rim, but that was not absolutely necessary-rimless driving-wheels were, and still are common in China. Thin cords connected the outwardly diverging spokes, forming a “cat’s cradle” that carried the driving-belt.