This contribution constitutes a first restitution of an ongoing research on the technological changes connected to this specific phase of silk reeling: silk crossing. The technological change affecting silk crossing is followed along its two lines: on the one hand the transfer of manual skills to the machine, on the other the control of gestures through process architecture. Thus emerges an early attempt at automation that allows usto situate more clearly what continuities and what ruptures exist between the knowledge linked to the artisan world and the techno-scientific innovation characterising industrial capitalism, in particular with reference to the sexual division of labour.