What Leonardo da Vinci machine was designed to spin flax fibers into thread?

Leonardo da Vinci designed a spinning machine intended to spin flax fibers into thread.

The machine appears in Leonardo’s textile studies and uses coordinated mechanical movement to draw out and twist fibers. Spinning transforms loose fibers into a continuous thread, which can then be woven into cloth. Leonardo’s design sought to make this repetitive task faster and more regular than hand spinning.

The machine is sometimes inaccurately identified as a spinning jenny. James Hargreaves patented the spinning jenny in Britain in the eighteenth century, more than two centuries after Leonardo’s lifetime. Leonardo’s device belongs to an earlier tradition of experimental textile machinery and should not be assigned that later name.

His interest in spinning was part of a wider effort to mechanize production. The drawings show how gears, drums, and moving parts could coordinate several stages of fiber preparation. As with many notebook designs, the surviving plans do not prove that Leonardo built a commercially successful machine.