What is made from celluloid? Detailed answer

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What is made from celluloid? Detailed answer

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What is made from celluloid?

Ping-pong balls and collar stiffeners.

Celluloid film has not been made for a long time. The main ingredient in celluloid is cellulose nitrate; modern film is made from cellulose acetate.

Celluloid is considered to be the first plastic. In strictly technical terms, it is a thermoplastic, which means that every time it is reheated, it can be given almost any shape.

Celluloid is composed of cellulose nitrate and camphor. Cellulose occurs naturally in the cell walls of plants. Camphor is obtained from camphor laurel; it can be distinguished by the characteristic smell of naphthalene, the balls of which, by the way, are made from it.

For the first time in history, celluloid was obtained in the English city of Birmingham by Alexander Parkes, who patented it for use in the manufacture of waterproof clothing. And celluloid became a cheap substitute for ivory: billiard balls and artificial teeth began to be made from it.

Because of its malleability, celluloid made cinema possible because rigid glass plates cannot pass through a projector. True, on the other hand, celluloid is not only terribly combustible, but also rapidly decomposing, which greatly complicates storage. Therefore, the use of celluloid has been greatly reduced these days.

Celluloid has been replaced by more stable plastics: cellulose acetate (derived from wood pulp) and polyethylene (a byproduct of gasoline production).

Cellulose nitrate (or nitrocellulose) was invented by accident in 1846 by Christian Schönbein, the man who had discovered ozone six years earlier.

While experimenting in the kitchen with nitric and sulfuric acid, Shenbein accidentally broke the bottle, wiped all this mess from the table with his wife's cotton apron, and hung it up to dry on the stove. But the fabric immediately burned out with an explosion - this is how the first new explosive was discovered (the very first, gunpowder, was invented in ancient China).

The new material was called "gun cotton" (guncotton). It was smokeless and four times more powerful than regular gunpowder. Schönbein immediately patented the discovery and sold the exclusive rights to manufacture it to John Hall and Sons. The following year, their factory in Faversham, Kent, exploded, burying twenty-one workers in the rubble.

Numerous fatal explosions also took place in France, Russia and Germany. A stable product was obtained only forty years later, in 1889, when the English chemists James Dewar and Frederick Abel developed cordite based on nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.

Seven years earlier, Dewar had invented the thermos.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

Which holy book contains 29 combinations of letters whose meanings are unknown?

29 of the 114 surahs of the Qur'an begin with combinations of Arabic letters, the so-called muqatta, the meanings of which are unknown. The interpreters of the Qur'an tried to interpret them in different ways, including by converting them into numbers corresponding to the serial numbers of letters in the Arabic alphabet, and looking for patterns in these numbers. However, most Muslims simply consider the mukatta to be a divine secret.

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