Cellulose The Quintessential Bio-based Plastic

If we step back to the nineteenth eentury, another natural polymer, cellulose, in addition to rubber, impaeted everyday life. The invention of cellulose plastics, also known as Celluloid, Parkesine, Xylonite, or Ivoride, has been attributed to three people the Swiss professor Christian Schonbein, the English inventor Alexander Parkes, and the American entrepreneur John Wesley Hyatt. 

Alexander Parkes started playing around with cellulose nitrate in 1847, and spent the next 15 years in the laboratory perfecting the formulas and processes to manufacture cellulose nitrate. His final process took the nitrated cotton and added vegetable oils and organic solvents producing a plastic mass that was easily molded into any shape or form after it was softened under heat. He called his plastic mass Parkesine. The new applications for this versatile material, such as combs, knife handles, and decorations, made their debut at the 1862 World Exposition in London. In 1866, Parkes launched the Parkesine Company Ltd. Due to the low quality of its products, Parkesine was not a success and the company was liquidated in 1868. The poor mixing of the additives and solvents 

With a new and versatile material, Hyatt and his co-workers needed equipment to mass-produce plastic products. Based on experience from metal injection molding, the Hyatt brothers built and patented the first injection molding machine in 1872, to mold cellulose materials, as well as the first blow molding machine, to manufacture hollow products. In the summer of 1869, 

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