the.com/reel

the spinning heart of cinema, fishing, and your doomscrolling thumb — all named for going in circles

means A revolving spool used to wind up something flexible — film, fishing line, thread — or by extension a length of that wound-up material, like a movie reel or the dizzy stagger of someone who 'reels' from a blow.

from From Old English 'hrēol,' a device for winding thread, traced back to a Proto-Germanic root tied to spinning and turning. The dance called a reel — and the verb meaning to whirl or stagger — likely sprang from the same sense of going round and round. The fishing reel and film reel are later, literal-minded heirs to that ancient turning spool; the social-media 'Reel' is the newest cousin, borrowing the name of the spinning film it imitates.

film origin
Old reels held ~1000 feet, roughly eleven minutes of film
dance form
Scottish and Irish reels predate the cinema by centuries
to reel
Means to stagger dizzily, like after bad news
fishing
Bait-casting reels date back to 17th-century China
modern bite
Instagram launched Reels in 2020 chasing TikTok
for instance

charlie chaplin modern times — 1936 film featuring the famous factory conveyor belt scene with reel-to-reel footage

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