Louis-Marie Hilaire Bernigaud de Grange, Count (''Comte'') de Chardonnet (1 May 1839 – 11 March 1924) was a French

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

and

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

from

Besançon Besançon (, ; , ; archaic ; ) is the capital of the Departments of France, department of Doubs in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The city is located in Eastern France, close to the Jura Mountains and the border with Switzerland. Capi ...

, and inventor of artificial silk. In the late 1870s, Chardonnet was working with

Louis Pasteur Louis Pasteur (, ; 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist, pharmacist, and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, Fermentation, microbial fermentation, and pasteurization, the la ...

on a remedy to the epidemic that was destroying French silkworms. Failure to clean up a spill in the darkroom resulted in Chardonnet's discovery of

nitrocellulose Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitric acid and ...

as a potential replacement for real

silk Silk is a natural fiber, natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving, woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is most commonly produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoon (silk), c ...

. Realizing the value of such a discovery, Chardonnet began to develop his new product. He called his new invention "Chardonnet silk" (''soie de Chardonnet'') and displayed it in the Paris Exhibition of 1889. However, Chardonnet's material was extremely flammable, and was subsequently replaced with other, more stable materials. He was the first to patent artificial silk, although Georges Audemars had invented a variety called

rayon Rayon, also called viscose and commercialised in some countries as sabra silk or cactus silk, is a semi-synthetic fiber made from natural sources of regenerated cellulose fiber, cellulose, such as wood and related agricultural products. It has t ...

in 1855.

References

1839 births 1924 deaths Businesspeople from Besançon History of the chemical industry 19th-century French engineers 19th-century French inventors {{France-engineer-stub

See also

References