Cellulose nitrate, history

Tliere is another type of application where the damping effect of plastic structures can be used to advantage. It has a long although not obvious history. The early airplanes used doped fabric as the covering for wings and other aerodynamic surfaces. The dope was cellulose nitrate and later cellulose acetate that is a damping type of plastic. Conse-... 

Indeed it can be stated that the history of modern expls begins with the discoveries of nitroglycerin (NG) and nitrocellulose (or more correctly cellulose nitrate or NC) nearly 125 years ago, and their application to military and commercial usage. An excellent review of the early history of NC is given by. T.L. Davis (Ref 29, pp 244—56). The early histories of NG and EGDN (discovered in 1870) are summarized, respectively, in Vol 6, G99-R to G100-R and E259-R, and in the Naoum reference cited above... 

The history of plasticizers for man-made resins goes back to 18A6 when Schoenbein prepared cellulose nitrate, which provided the technology to make a resin that was amenable to plasticization (2). It was first plasticized by Alexander Parkes when he made "Parkesine," the forerunner of Celluloid (3 ). Parkes went on to produce various articles of plasticized cellulose nitrate. To modify their flexibility and hardness, he tried plasticizing the resin with oils, gums, paraffins, stearine, tar, glycerine, and other substances and varied proportions of those to his "pyroxy1ine." Cottonseed or castor oils were the preferred plasticizers cited in his master patent issued in 1865. 

The history of the development of polymers is intimately tied to cellulose nitrate, also referred to as nitrocellulose. This inorganic cellulose ester is obtained by reacting cellulose with a mixture of nitric acid and sulfuric acid for about 30 min. 

Hyatt, John Wesley (1837-1920) During the 1860s John Wesley Hyatt developed cellulose nitrate plastic and successfully produced and marketed billiard balls as a less expensive alternative to ivory billiard balls. See cellulose nitrate plastic plastic history. 

The early history of polymers is really the conversion of natural polymers into useful materials. Examples include the vulcanization of rubber (Goodyear, 1839), celluloid (which is plasticized cellulose nitrate—Hyatt, 1868), and cellulose-derived fibres, e.g. cuprammonia rayon (Despeisses, 1890) and viscose rayon (Cross, Bevan and Beadle, 1892). The first truly synthetic polymer, that is, one made from laboratory chemicals, was Bakelite (Bakeland, 1907). This was made from phenol and formaldehyde. Bakeland probably did not know the chemical structure of the Bakelite, but he did realize that organic chemicals containing multiple functionality yielded insoluble materials. The various phenol-formaldehyde resins (PF), e.g. Bakelite and novolacs, were thus obtained in an empirical manner. 

The commercial history of synthetic resins and plastics can be traced to about 1869, when John Wesley Hyatt and his brother Isaiah, who were seeking a substitute for ivory, developed a practical process for converting cellulose nitrate into useful products." It was mixed with camphor and molded into dentures, billiard balls, toothbrushes, combs, dolls, and collars. This material, which was called celluloid, was one of the developments that made the early motion picture industry possible, as it also could be cast into transparent films of good optical quality. Because of its flammability and poor dur-... 

In North America the problem of moisture absorption has been addressed by developing a moisture resistant gunpowder substitute based on potassium nitrate but augmented with potassium perchlorate. The latter is said to absorb less moisture than the nitrate at a given humidity. In addition, the gunpowder substitute contains a hydrophobic binder, called ethyl cellulose, (2.22) (celluloses have a history of use in pyrotechnics) together with an organic fuel, known as phenolphthalein, (2.23) which is said to enhance the bum rate. 

The inferred ratio of acid to starch seems to have been too low to produce appreciably more than about 7 % of nitrogen, although Pelouze, by using a large excess of nitric acid, made flammable products, some of which he detonated. He also found that nitrated starch is very unstable, a property that has hampered its industrial development throughout its history. He concluded that xyloidin and the new and fascinating cellulose derivative— pyroxylin —were different substances. 

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