Nogue, one of the sub directors, that we owe the apparatus which permits the thread to be wound mechanically and to be twisted and doubled in the quickest and most practical manner. The spiders were imprisoned in match boxes and by slightly compressing the abdomen he managed to extract and wind upon a little reel turned by hand it thread that sometimes attained a length of 500 yards. "The first experiments of Father Comboné were made in the simplest manner. The spiders accept this imprisonment with resignation and lie perfectly quiet while the silken thread issuing from their bodies is rapidly wound on to a reel by means of a cleverly devised machine worked by hand." - Great Britain Board of Trade Journal M Nogue's apparatus consists of a sort of stocks arranged to pin down on their backs a dozen spiders. "It should be said that the female halabe allows herself to be relieved of her silken store with exemplary docility and this in spite of the fact that she is distinguished for her ferocity her usual treatment of the males who pay her court is to eat them and she feasts without compunction on members of her own sex weaker than herself. That fabric has since been lost, but the exhibition brought them some attention, excerpted below. Together, they got quite a spider silk fabric industry going in Madagascar and even exhibited " a complete set of bed hangings" at the Paris Exposition of 1898. "When we stuck them in the machine and started turning it, lo and behold, this beautiful gold-colored silk started coming out," Godley said.įather Comboué, who one historical text erroneously calls Father Comboné, had a partner in designing his machine, M. As an experiment, the pair collected an initial batch of about 20 spiders.
"Simon managed to build a replica of this 24-spider-silking machine that was used at the turn of the century," said Nicholas Godley, who co-led the project with Peers.
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