The belt-drive or driving-belt transmits power from one wheel to another, and produces continuous rotary motion. It existed as early as the first century BC in China. It is attested by Dictionary of Local Expressions, a book published in 15 BC. It was developed for use in machines connected with silk manufacture, especially one called a quilling machine, which wound the long silk fibers on to bobbins for the weavers' shuttles. These machines featured a large wheel and a driving-belt and small pulley. The machines are mentioned again in the book Enlargement of Literary Expositor compiled between 230 and 232 AD.

The driving-belt was essential for the invention of the spinning wheel. The belts could run not only round normal wheels with rims, whether grooved or not, but also round rimless wheels. A rimless spinning wheel may sound a contradiction in terms, and the use of a driving-belt with rimless wheels might at first seem an impossible. But in fact a cat's cradle of fibers strung between wheel spokes, which protrude slightly or exist in two sets placed in alternation can create an entirely adequate nexus for a belt.

A refinement of the driving-belt is the chain-drive, invented in China in 976 AD. A chain-drive is essentially a driving-belt, which instead of being solid is a chain into the links of which fit sprockets on the wheels around which it is wrapped.

The driving-belt was apparently imported to Europe as part of the technology of quilling wheels and spinning wheels introduced into Italy by travelers returning from China. The oldest actual representation of a driving-belt in remained extremely rare in Europe until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, indicating that Europeans did not appreciate the potential of this particular element of the Chinese textile machines for other purposes to any significant degree for more than three centuries. Flat belts and wire cables as driving-belts in Europe only began to be used in the nineteenth century.

Author: Jeff

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