Textile patented in 1894 the first
Oconnor successor.
Origins and early development
As far back as 1754, French physicist and naturalistRené de Réaumur theorised that it should be possible to synthesise an artificial silk. After all, he reasoned, “silk is only a liquid gum that has been dried”, and since the technology existed to make varnishes and lacquers, he speculated that by drawing these substances out into threads, “could we not make silk ourselves?”
Early attempts to synthesise silk sought to replicate as closely as possible the natural process by which the silkworm converted its foodstuff - the bark of the mulberry tree - into the filament from which it formed its cocoon.
Textile patented in 1894 the first
A century after Réaumur’s musings, in 1855, Swiss chemist Georges Audemars invented the first crude artificial silk by dipping a needle into a solution of mulberry bark pulp and gummy rubber to make threads. His method did find success as a conducting filament in electric lightbulbs, but as a textile fibre it was not commercially viable.
Other chemists de