American Celluloid Company

At around the same time in the United States, a bilfiard ball company advertised a 10,000 reward for the discovery of an alternate material to ivory. John Wesley Hyatt developed collodion, a mixture of cellulose nitrate and alcohol. Like cellulose nitrate, collodion was highly flammable and would produce a small explosion upon agitation. Hyatt reported [W]e had a letter from a billiard saloon proprietor in Colorado mentioning this fact. . . saying he did not care so much about it, but that instantly every man in the room pulled a gun. To avoid melee, camphor, a derivative of the laurel tree, was added, and in 1870 Hyatt received a U.S. patent for celluloid. In 1871 Hyatt and his brother Isaiah formed the American Celluloid Company, which is today the Plastics Division of the Celanese Corporation. 

F. S. Archer s wet collodion process (1851) reduced the exposure time to about 10 s and R. L. Maddox s dry gelatin plates reduced it to only 0.5 s. In 1889 G. Eastman used a roll film of celluloid and founded the American Eastman Kodak Company. 

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