Pioneer Plastic

The Making and Selling of Celluloid

• Author(s): Robert Douglas Friedel,
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Pages: 153
• ISBN_10: 0299091708
  ISBN_13: 9780299091705
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Technology & Engineering / Chemical & Biochemical , Technology & Engineering / Technical & Manufacturing Industries & Trades ,

Description:... In 1869, an Albany printer discovered how to mix nitrocellulose with camphor under high pressure to yield a hard, shiny, moldable substance which he and his brother called celluloid. This discovery was the dawn of the Plastics Age, but it represented only the first step in establishing a new technology. Examines the 20 years of laboratory trial and error that produced the first artificial plastic, as well as the equally difficult challenge of selling the product to a public that wasn't sure what to use it for. He shows how the struggle to find uses for the new material and to create markets for it was as significant as solving the problems of making it. Illustrated.