The last time I visited the Temecula Valley Museum, I purchased this Spring, 1982 edition of The High Country. What a treasure of interesting facts I never knew of. WOW.
Did you know this? In the 1930s, with the start of the Second World War, spider’s silk became the standard material for crosshairs in military gun sights. To cope with the sudden demand for spider’s silk, a number of spider farms were established in the United States. One of the most successful of these was that run in California by Nan Songer.
Songer was apparently fascinated with insects at a very young age and discovered that the tensile strength of these particular spider webs was as strong as steel. The webs, twisted onto frames before being sent away, did not break or freeze, making them valuable for weapons.
She collected spiders from her local area, and had up to 10,000 living in her house. She became so adept at collecting silk, and separating it into fine strands, that she was asked by the US National Bureau of Standards to provide a standardized list of spider’s silk to specification. She produced a mail order catalogue with silk ranging from ‘extra fine’ to ‘extra heavy’. For particularly fine instruments, she also offered the silk of newly hatched spiders that measured 500,000ths of an inch. She developed a technique to massage the bellies of black widow and green spiders, causing them to produce their strong webs, which she carefully harvested every six days. Wild.
Her unique talents were so great that she was featured in a news clip from the 1940s called Woman Speaks. It highlighted seven women whose contributions were outstanding. Nan Songer was one of the seven, joining Amelia Earhart and Marie Curie. Impressive, right? Oh man, I love history and I look forward to visiting the Mousley Museum of Yucaipa History to learn more about this amazing woman!
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