Braconnot, Henri

Evidently, the idea was there but the material was lacking then to perform successfully the process of fiber spinning. But when Henri Braconnot in 1832 and Christian Friedrich Schoenbein in 1846 discovered how to make cellulose nitrate, the time for the "spark" had arrived. British Patent 283, issued in 1855, disclosed the treating of bast fibers from mulberry twigs with nitric acid, dissolving the product in a mixture of alcohol and ether together with rubber, and from this viscous mass drawing fibers with a steel needle after these fibers solidified in air, they were wound on a spool. 

Cellulose was first discovered in 1819 by the French naturalist Henri Braconnot (1781-1855). The compound was first isolated and analyzed fifteen years later by the French botanist Anselme Payen (1795-1871), who gave it its modern name of cellulose based on its origin ( cell ) plus the suffix -ose. The earliest chemical studies of cellulose were conducted by a team of English chemists, Charles Frederick Cross (1855-1935), Edward John Bevan (1856-1921), and Clayton Beadle (1868-1917), who identified the compound we now know as cellulose and reported on its structure and properties in the 1890s and early 1900s. 

French naturalist Henri Braconnot discovers cellulose. 

Labrude, P. and Becq, C. 2003. Pharmacist and chemist Henri Braconnot. Rev Hist Pharm. 51(337) 61-78. 

A contemporary, Henri Braconnot, produced Xyloidine in 1833 by the reaction of nitric acid and starch and another contemporary, Theophile Jules Pelouze produced "Pyroxyline" by the reaction of nitric acid and paper in 1838. Subsequently, in 1836, Christian Fredrich Schonbein obtained a higher degree of substitution in cellulose by using a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acid. Schonbein obtained patents in England and USA for his "Nitrocellulose" which he called "gun cotton". 

R.A.A. Muzzarelli, J. Boudrant, D. Meyer, N. Manno, M. DeMarchis, M.C. Paoletti, Current views on fungal chitin/chitosan, human chitinases, food preservation, glucans, pectins and inulin A tribute to Henri Braconnot, precursor of the carbohydrate polymers science, on the chitin bicentennial, Carbohydr. Pol, 87,995-1012, 2012. 

Person to discover - Henri Braconnot Alexander Parker ... 

Details Henri Braconnot discovered that nitric acid with starch or wood fibers produces explosive material Alexander Parker invented celluloid ... 

Professor Henri Braconnot (1780-1855) was a French chemist more famous for the extraction of glucose from cellulose and the discovery of a precursor form of plastic than for pigment research. However, he received a sample of pigment for analysis from a Mr Noel, the owner of a wallpaper factory in Nancy and published a paper on the preparation of copper acetate arsenite green in 1822, shortly after the German chemist Liebig (1822,1823). For more historical information see emerald green. 

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