By whom was artificial silk produced experimentally?
The first MAN-MADE FIBRE.
The first MAN-MADE FIBRE was produced experimentally in 1883 in the form of cellulose-based artificial silk by (Sir) Joseph Swan at Newcastle upon Tyne. Swan was then engaged in developing his incandescent electric light bulb and wanted to find a substitute for the fragile cotton filaments used in its manufacture. He succeeded in producing an improved light-bulb filament by squirting nitro-cellulose through an orifice into a coagulating fluid to make a single thread. Employing an even finer hold for the jet of nitro-cellulose, he was able to create a thread fine enough to be woven into fabric. A number of small mats and doilies were crocheted in this material by Mrs Swan and displayed at the Inventions Exhibition of 1885, but Swan did not develop the process commercially.
A similar method of producing artificial silk was patented in France in 1885 by Comte Hilaire de Chardonnet, who established the world’s first factory for the manufacture of man-made fibre at Besancon in 1892. Chardonnet’s sole artificielle was satisfactory for braids, tassels, fringes and the like, but inadequate for woven goods.
The first MAN-MADE TEXTILE YARN capable of being woven and dyed was viscose rayon, developed by C.H. stern and C.S. Cross at a pilot plant set up at Kew, Surrey in 1898. Viscose filament had been patented in that year by Stern, while viscose itself, a substance obtained by treating woodpulp with caustic soda and other chemicals, was the subject of a master patent taken out by Cross in 1892. British rights to the process were acquired by Samuel Courtauld & Co. for £ 25,000, and commercial production began at a specially built factory outside Coventry in July 1905. Manufacture of rayon by the purchasers of the French and German patent rights was started in their respective countries the same year. It was in Germany that the first stocking made from synthetic fibre were produced at the Bamberg rayon factory in 1910.
