This timeline of clothing and textiles technology covers events relating to fiber and flexible woven material worn on the body. This includes the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, and manufacturing systems (technology).
Fibers and fabrics
Research remains ongoing as to when people started wearing clothes. c. 50,000 BC – A discovered twisted fibre (a 3-ply cord fragment) indicates the likely use of clothing, bags, nets and similar technology by Neanderthals in southeastern France. c. 27000 BC – Impressions of textiles, basketry, and nets left on small pieces of hard clay in Europe. c. 25000 BC – Venus figurines depicted with clothing. c. 8000 BC – Evidence of flax cultivation in the Near East. c. 6000 BC – Evidence of woven textiles used to wrap the dead at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia. c. 3000 BC – Breeding of domesticated sheep with a wooly fleece rather than hair in the Near East. c. 2500 BC – The Indus Valley civilisation cultivates cotton in the Indian subcontinent. c. 1988 BC – Production of linen cloth in Ancient Egypt, along with other bast fibers including rush, reed, palm, and papyrus. c. 1000 BC – Cherchen Man was laid to rest with a twill tunic and the earliest known sample of tartan fabric. c. 200 AD – Earliest woodblock printing from China. Flowers in three colors on silk. 247 AD – Dura-Europos, a Roman outpost, is destroyed. Excavations of the city discovered early examples of naalebinding fabric. 11th century – Broadcloth first produced in the Duchy of Brabant (now Flanders). 1275 – Approximate date of a silk burial cushion knit in two colors found in the tomb of Spanish royalty. 1493 – The first available reference to lace is in a will by one of the ruling Milanese Sforza family. 1550-1600 – Armazine and Bombazine introduced for the first time in United Kingdom. 1590 – First reference to Cambric fabric. 1840 – Barathea developed as a cloth for mourning clothes. 1892 – Cross, Bevan & Beadle invent Viscose. 1938 – First commercial nylon fiber production by DuPont. Nylon is the first synthetic, non-cellulosic fiber on the market. 1938 – First commercial PTFE fiber production by DuPont. 1953 – First commercial polyester PET fiber production by DuPont. 1958 – Spandex fiber invented by DuPont's Joseph Shivers. 1964 – Kevlar fiber invented by DuPont's Stephanie Kwolek.
Tools and machines
Ancient and prehistoric
c. 28000 BC – Sewing needles in use at Kostenki in Russia. c. 6500 BC – Approximate date of Naalebinding examples found in Nahal Hemar Cave, Israel. This technique, which uses short separate lengths of thread, predated the invention of knitting (with its continuous lengths of thread) and requires that all of the as-yet unused thread be pulled through the loop in the sewn material. This requires much greater skill than knitting in order to create a fine product. 4200 BC – Date of Mesolithic examples of Naalebinding found in Denmark, marking spread of technology to Northern Europe. 200 BC to 200 AD – Approximate date of earliest evidence of "Needle Knitting" in Peru, a form of Naalebinding that preceded local contact with the Spanish. 298 AD – Earliest attestation of a foot-powered loom, with a hint that the invention arose at Tarsus.
Medieval period 500s – Handheld roller cotton gins invented in the Indian subcontinent. 500-1000 – Spinning wheel invented in the Indian subcontinent. 1000s – Finely decorated examples of cotton socks made by true knitting using continuous thread appear in Egypt. 1000s – The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from the Islamic world. 1100s-1300s – Dual-roller cotton gins appear in India and China. 1200s-1300s – The worm gear roller cotton gin invented in the Indian subcontinent during the early Delhi Sultanate era. 1400s-1500s – The incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in the Indian subcontinent some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. 1562 – Date of first example of use of the purl stitch, from a tomb in Toledo, Spain, which allows knitting of panels of material. Previously material had to be knitted in the round (in a tubular form) and cut open. 1589 – William Lee invents stocking frame, the first but hand-operated weft knitting machine.
Early modern period
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