According to Chinese legend, the weaving of silk originated in the 27th century BC during the reign of Emperor Huang Ti, whose wife supposedly developed the technique of reeling the thread of the silkworm for use in weaving. Although for many centuries raw silk and silk fabrics were exported to the Mediterranean countries, the source of the fiber remained unknown to Europeans until the 6th century AD, when travelers returning from China smuggled eggs of the silkworm into the Western world. From this stock, silkworm culture was introduced into Greece and Italy. By the 12th century silk was used for the weaving of precious fibers throughout Europe.
In the western hemisphere, attempts to cultivate the silkworm began in 1620 when King James I of England urged the colonists to produce silk instead of tobacco. Some success was achieved by the Georgian colonists, but subsequent efforts in Connecticut and New Jersey failed because of the lack of efficient, low-cost labor required to raise the mulberry trees, upon which the silkworms feed, and to care for silkworms.
In the mid-20th century only Japan and China were important silk-producing countries. At the beginning of World War II, Japan supplied 90 percent of the world production of raw silk. When the Western world was cut off from this source during the war, nylon fibers, which had been developed in the 1930s, were used as a substitute.