A spinning wheel was a primitive technology used to produce cloth. Fifty Human spinning wheels belonging to the Neo-Transcendentalists were among the manifest of the colony ship SS Mariposa when it launched from Earth in 2123. (TNG: "Up The Long Ladder")

In an Earth fairy tale, the character Rumpelstiltskin used a spinning wheel to turn straw into gold. (DS9: "If Wishes Were Horses")