Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest unambiguous visual record of a spinning wheel dates to the year 1237. This artwork by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti depicts a spinning wheel with clear mechanical detail in Baghdad.
Historians debate the origin but Dieter Kuhn and Weiji Cheng place the invention in Zhou dynasty China during the first millennium BCE. Evidence suggests the device was known in the Middle East by the early eleventh century, specifically by 1030.
A citizen of Brunswick added a treadle to a spinning mechanism in 1533. This innovation allowed a spinner to rotate the spindle with one foot while keeping both hands free.
Mahatma Gandhi chose the traditional spinning wheel as his manner of dress starting in 1931. He urged followers to spin thread to create economic independence and boycott British goods through the swadeshi movement.
Franz Schubert composed Gretchen am Spinnrade in 1814 as a lied for piano and voice. The piano part depicts Gretchen's restlessness as she spins by a window waiting for love to return.