Celluloid
Celluloid, the first plastic, was developed from cellulose in 1855 by an English inventor named Alexander Parkes. When Parkes dissolved pyroxylin, a partially nitrated cellulose, in alcohol and ether-containing camphor it yielded a hard solid which could be heated and molded. Subsequently, Parkes tried to market his product, which he called parkesine, but was unsuccessful because the substance was so revolutionary that no one knew how to use it. Furthermore, it required such large amounts of solvent to make that it was extremely expensive.
Celluloid resurfaced in 1869 with help from a contest sponsored by Phelanand Collender to find a substitute for ivory used in billiard balls. At the time depletion of the herds of elephants in Africa was leading to a shortage in natural ivory. Inventor John Wesley Hyatt and his brother sought to win the $10,000 prize by improving on Parkes' process. They dissolved cotton in nitric acid, and added camphor. They then applied heat and pressure to mold the celluloid into billiard balls. This resulted in a thermoplastic product that would not break when bent and which could be made into thin sheets or molded into a variety of shapes. It could be treated to look like amber, onyx, tortoise shell and many other natural products. It soon substituted for ivory and ebony on piano keyboards and was successfully marketed in many forms, including shirt collars, knife handles, dice, buttons, fountain pens, and baby rattles. For a while the celluloid business flourished, although its growth was impeded somewhat when rumors spread that celluloid billiard balls burst into flame when they struck each other. John Hyatt received the Perkin Medal of Honor for his developments in celluloid.
In addition, celluloid revolutionized the photography industry. Until this time glass plates smeared with an emulsion or paper treated with a similar emulsion were exposed to form photos. In 1887 Hannibal Goodwin first proposed the use of rolls of celluloid film. George Eastman used Hyatt's celluloid to develop sheet film for still photography in 1889. Both of these developments led to cheaper and faster developing. Still photography was revolutionized and motion pictures were born. Unfortunately celluloid was highly flammable and films often burst into flames when the celluloid jammed in front of the projector light bulb. By 1924 celluloid film was set aside in favor of safety film, which is made from cellulose acetate. In safety film, acetic acid replaces the nitric acid used to form the nitrocellulose and forms instead cellulose acetate, a much more stable compound.
Celluloid continued to be an important chemical for many industrial applications until 1897 when the next major advance in plastics occurred with the invention of Galalith, which is a plastic made from casein and formaldehyde.
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