Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid

Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid by Friedel, Robert D.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780299091705.

In 1869, an Albany printer discovered how to mix nitrocellulose with camphor under high pressure to yield a hard, shiny, moldable substance which he & 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 & 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 & to create markets for it was as significant as solving the problems of making it. Illustrated.