The classical guitar is a type of guitar that is used in classical music and was a precursor to modern acoustic and electric guitars. A major difference is that its strings are made of gut or, more recently, nylon or fluoropolymers, typically with silver-plated copper fine wire wound about the acoustically lower strings, in contrast to the steel strings for modern acoustic and electric guitars. The modern classical guitar was developed in the mid-nineteenth century from the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Baroque guitar, which, in turn, was descended from the fifteenth and sixteenth century Spanish vihuela and gittern.