In all types of spinning, it is important that the textile be first disentangled and cleaned of seeds or debris. This was done by hand for thousands of years. Sometime during the Middle Ages, spinners began pulling the raw fibers through thistles or teazles; the tiny hooks on the teazle heads would comb the fibers, removing any dirt and arranging the fibers so that they would be roughly parallel. The Latin name for the teazles was cardus , and the process became known as carding.

Soon the teazles were mounted side by side on two wooden slats, one for each hand. The carder would then clean the material by drawing one slat against the other. The carded material, called sliver or roving, would be removed by hand from one of the carding slats and then could be sent to the spinner. By the early 1700s, the natural...