His device was made of silkworm gut and was not widely used.

When the shop was opened, fly lines were made of silk and leaders of silkworm gut.

Terminal tackle was Spanish silkworm gut, with the breaking strain of a cobweb in its thinnest diameters.

Tippet sizes were traditionally expressed as X sizes in a scale based on silkworm gut leader material, nowadays superseded by nylon.

In 1909, Richard Richter developed the first intrauterine device made from silkworm gut which was further developed and marketed in Germany by Ernst Gräfenberg in the late 1920s.

By rights it should have been fastened to the wall, set so that the moment anything or anyone touched the silkworm gut, suspended in a zigzag just off the floor, the latch would release and the spring would mow down its prey.