Textiles: fun facts and quiz

Natural fibres come from plants and animals: cotton from a plant’s seed pods, linen from flax stems, wool from sheep, and silk from silkworms.

Key fact
Linen is one of the oldest known textiles.

Silk comes from the cocoons of silkworm caterpillars. Each cocoon is one long thread. China kept how silk was made a secret for centuries.

Key fact
One cocoon can hold a single thread hundreds of metres long.

Nylon, the first fully synthetic fibre, was invented at DuPont in 1935. It first appeared in toothbrush bristles, then in stockings that sold out in hours.

Key fact
Nylon was first used in toothbrushes, in 1938.

Weaving crosses two sets of threads at right angles: the warp and the weft. Knitting loops a single yarn, which makes the fabric stretchy.

Key fact
Denim is woven; most T-shirts are knitted.

Dyes once came from nature. Tyrian purple came from sea snails and cost so much that only emperors wore it; indigo, from plants, dyed cloth deep blue.

Key fact
Indigo gave blue jeans their colour.

In 1804, Joseph Marie Jacquard built a loom controlled by punched cards, which wove complex patterns automatically.

Key fact
Charles Babbage borrowed punched cards for his computing engine.

Some fabrics are engineered. Gore-Tex has a thin membrane with pores far too small for raindrops, but big enough to let sweat vapour escape.

Key fact
A Gore-Tex membrane has over a billion pores per square centimetre.