In 1901 in England, Charles Cross and Edward Bevan developed viscose, derived from cellulose. It was used by the American Viscose Company (1910) and DuPont (1921) and evolved into Rayon: artificial silk. Several years before Cross and Bevan, the French Count Hilaire de Chardonnet, while cultivating his hobby of photography, had discovered a collodion solution (used to coat glass plates then made sensitive with a special solution) from which he was able to pull long threads similar to silk. It was the first reasonable “synthetic” imitation of silk (an “artificial” product, on the other hand, is not an imitation but rather produced ex novo in an industrial way). He patented his process in 1885, and began producing it in 1891. Chardonnet silk, however, proved to be extremely flammable: it is remembered that at a ball where the gentleman was smoking, some cigar ash fell on the lady’s Chardonnet silk dress, and the dress disappeared in a flash of light and smoke. It is not known what happened to the lady.
