The Golden Thread summary

In ancient Chinese culture, silk was equated with many kinds of power.

For one, its economic significance was obvious – an enormous industry revolved around silk. Palaces were equipped with facilities for silk manufacture, and Chinese royalty had a hand in their operation. Silk was even used as currency. For example, one ancient inscription notes that a horse and high-quality silks were used to purchase five slaves.

The Vikings were skilled boat-builders – sailors whose famous longships helped them to commit infamous, violent raids on towns and monasteries.

But they also did much more than that. The Vikings were traders, carrying huge loads of goods, especially animal pelts, to continental Europe and all the way to the Black Sea. They received bounty from all over the world in return. Chinese and Persian textiles have been found in Scandinavian graves, and it appears that Arabic designs and language were common symbols of status in Viking communities.

In 1912, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott was beaten by a Norwegian team in a race to be the first humans to reach the South Pole. Tragically, on their journey home, Scott and the four members of his Terra Nova expedition perished in the Antarctic’s harsh environment.

Scott and his men were experienced explorers, but in the end, a key risk in polar exploration is the human body, which simply doesn’t handle cold well.

In the late nineteenth century, scientists developed a new kind of fabric from cellulose, which they called artificial or imitation silk. The medium for this was usually wood pulp, turned into a thick liquid called viscose with the addition of carbon disulfide (CS2). Viscose was then treated with acid until filaments of rayon formed.

Rayon was inexpensive and commercially promising, and it could even be woven with natural fibers to create new, affordable fabric blends. And because synthetics were made using strong chemicals, production was also highly mechanized and efficient – the domain of large multinational corporations. From 1931 to 1936, the rayon industry in America increased production by 80 percent.

On July 21, 1969, 15 percent of the world’s population tuned in to watch Neil Armstrong become the first person to set foot on the moon. But few gave much consideration to one of Armstrong’s most critical pieces of equipment: his clothing.

People leaving the Earth’s surface have always needed special clothing to protect them from high-altitude effects like the cold and thin air. For example, American girdle-maker David Clark’s anti-g suits, which are a type of flight suit, had vinyl-coated nylon bladders enclosing pilot’s bodies, pressurized to encourage blood flow and protect them during very high acceleration. The alien environment of space, of course, demanded something even more extreme.

Technological advancement has always raised questions about fairness in sports and whether new equipment or methods jeopardize the integrity of the competition.

Just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Speedo’s full-body LZR Racer swimsuit was introduced. It was designed to reduce drag – its fabric a blend of smooth, water-repellent synthetics and its seams joined together by ultrasonic welding to reduce bulging. It fit like a corset and felt strange and paper-like on the skin, but there was no question that the suit was incredibly fast; swimmers wearing it broke 22 world records in just two months, and a whopping 147 new records were set in 2009.