Carbon-fibre

From Srafopedia

Carbon fibre refers to the interweaving of threads of carbon filaments to produce a very versatile, mouldable, and strong material. It is very much like any other fabric, allowing it to be shaped into any form required, until it is bonded, when it sets in that shape permanently, making a very strong material under tensile and compressive stress. Due to this extremely high tensile strength and flexability, it is used in many stressful (as in force rather than emotional) jobs, such as rotor blades for helicopters, chassis for racing cars, and structural aspects of newer and theoretical buildings. Other uses even include construction of musical instruments such as violins, 'cellos and clarinets, for a very high fee. Carbon fibre was first used sometime in the 1960s, mainly as a highly experimental material that was priced at £200 per kilogram.

Relevance in His Dark Materials

Carbon fibre is used in the His Dark Materials series, but rather than being used for the high-risk applications common to our world, it is used for packaging in Lyra's world. Instead of being called Carbon-fibre, it is known as "Coal-silk", and is mentioned in Northern Lights as the material used for a bag to hold Lyra's new clothes when she is with Mrs Coulter. If Lyra's world is in any way similar to ours, the use of coal-silk in a bag will show the status of the shop the items were bought from - carbon fibre, and likely coal-silk is rather expensive to produce alongside the cheap plastics and fabrics bags could be made from.

The fact that carbon fibre (coal-silk) is used in packaging also highlights some of the technological advances of Lyra's world. In a place where zeppelins are the height of modern transport, it shows how different the development of that world is to ours - as carbon fibre was only really used from the 1980's onwards in our timeline (relatively late in modernising development), and even then only in the most expensive and advanced projects, for instance racing cars. By using carbon fibre for shopping bags, Philip Pullman accentuates the subtle differences in development that make a world so similar to ours so different.