Collodion filament

Sir Joseph Swan, as a result of his quest for carbon fiber for lamp filaments (2), learned how to denitrate nitrocellulose using ammonium sulfide. In 1885 he exhibited the first textiles made from this new artificial sHk, but with carbon fiber being his main theme he failed to foUow up on the textile possibihties. Meanwhile Count Hilaire de Chardoimet (3) was researching the nitrocellulose route and had perfected his first fibers and textiles in time for the Paris Exhibition in 1889. There he got the necessary financial backing for the first Chardoimet silk factory in Besancon in 1890. His process involved treating mulberry leaves with nitric and sulfuric acids to form cellulose nitrate which could be dissolved in ether and alcohol. This collodion solution could be extmded through holes in a spinneret into warm air where solvent evaporation led to the formation of soHd cellulose nitrate filaments. 

Audemars used an ancient Chinese method for producing threads from silkworm excretion by dipping the point of a needle into the solution and drawing it out. He used collodion made from mulberry bark and combined it with a gummy rubber solution. In this way, he was able to painstakingly produce fine filaments. He was, however, not able to produce a commercially practicable fiber. 

In 1664, Robert Hooke predicted that fibers equal to those produced by silkworms would be made by mechanical means. Joseph Wilson Swan produced filaments from Collodion in 1883 and attempted to use these filaments to produce carbon filaments for incandescent lamps. His earlier investigations of carbon filaments for illumination in 1860 preceded similar developments by Thomas Edison in the 1880 s. Swan was knighted for his invention in 1904. 

Count Louis Marie Hilaire Chardonnet, an assistant to Louis Pasteur, patented the process of producing filaments by forcing Collodion through small holes (spinnerets) in 1884. This "Chardonnet sifi" was a sensation at the Paris Exposition in 1891. Because of its inherent flammabiHty, this fiber was called "mother-in-law silk". Nevertheless, Chardonnet received the Perkin Medal in 1914 for this development. The carbon fibers used by Swan Edison in the nineteenth century were also used a century later as reinforcements for sophisticated plastic composites. 

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