THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL SILK

or whatever other substance it be, out of
which the silkworm wire-draws his clew.’”’

This was a new Idea. The Romans had
never thought of it. The Greeks had never
thought of it. It first came into the brain
of a thoughtful English scientist, in the
darkness of the seventeenth century.

Then, in 1740, a Frenchman named Bon
made stockings from cobwebs. = Another
Frenchman made silk filaments of a sort by
hashing up dead silkworms. But nothing
came of these experiments. No manufacturer
paid any attention to such oddities.
In 1754, a great French naturalist, Reamur,
brought Hooke’s idea to the front again. He
said : ““ Silk is only a liquid gum which has
been dried. Could we not make silk ourselves
with gums and resins ? *’

But nothing practical was done until 1846,
and it was done, in Manchester, by a Blackburn
 man named John Mercer.
Every one in the civilized world knows
“ mercerized cotton ’—a more durable cotton
cloth that has a silk-like gloss. But very
few people know the story of John Mercer,
who invented the process of mercerization.

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