While this may look like a bad toupee it's actually an ounce of fine conductive fiber.
For a pure metal fiber it's incredibly soft and can be blended with other fibers and spun into thread or yarn, embedded into composite materials or even felted!

Having a stock of raw conductive fiber allows you to control the fiber mix in your thread or other materials, therefor controlling the resistance of the material. Mixing the fiber with a natural hair fiber (anything with "scales") will yield a blend that is course enough to be felted. Felted conductive fibers can be used as 'squeeze sensor' because pushing the fibers together lowers the resistance of the felt.

For those of you asking about the composition of the stainless steel used in this fiber, it's 316L. You can find a link below with more information on that particular grade of stainless.

Documents:

• Fusing Conductive Fabric
• Properties of 316L Stainless Steel