In 1901 in England, Charles Cross and Edward Bevan developed viscose, derived from cellulose. It was used by the American Viscose Company (1910) and by DuPont (1921) and later evolved into Rayon: artificial silk. Several years before Cross and Bevan, the French Count Hilaire de Chardonnet, while pursuing his hobby of photography, had discovered a collodion solution (used to coat glass plates, which were then sensitized with a special solution) from which he could draw long silk-like threads. It was the first reasonable “synthetic” imitation of silk (an “artificial” product, on the other hand, is not an imitation but rather an industrially produced ex novo). He patented his process in 1885 and began producing it in 1891. Chardonnet silk, however, proved 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 unknown what happened to the lady.
