China is one of the earliest countries in the world to begin the production of textiles. According to legends, the Yellow Emperor’s wife Lei Zu invented the textile technology. In fact, however, China’s primitive textile technology dates back to the age way ahead of the Yellow Emperor period. The earliest textile product discovered by far is the scraps of kohemp cloth excavated at the site of the Caoxie (Straw Sandal) Hill, Wuxian County, Jiangsu province. It is more than 5700 years old.
From the Xia Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period, textile technology experienced great development. The quality of raw material cultivation was further improved. Through long-term refinement, the combination textile tools evolved into primitive reeling machines, spinning wheels and looms. The silk painting of the Western Han Dynasty and Han stone paintings discovered on Jinsi Mountain in Linyi, Shandong, show pictures of single-spindle spinning wheels. This kind of spinning wheels already employed the technique of rope-wheel power drive, which shows that as early as over 2000 years ago it was possible to produce high quality silk or thread by adding or combining strands. During the late Song Dynasty and the early Yuan Dynasty, there arose a famous figure in China’s history of textile technology in Shanghai’s Songjiang – Huang Daopo. She revolutionized the ginning tools, cotton-fluffing tools and spinning tools, which quickly popularized the production technology of cotton yarns and greatly increased the production. Compared with modern textile machines, with the exception of power intensity, spindle numbers and running speed, China’s ancient textile machinery operated basically on the same principle in terms of either machine structure or power transmission.
China is also credited with the invention of jacquard machine. The British scientist Dr. Joseph Needham thought that the jacquard machines used in the West were introduced from China and that the use of such machines was 400 years later than in CHINA.
