THE STORY OF ARTIFICIAL SILK

His aim at first was not to make a textile,
but to make a filament for incandescent lamps.
He succeeded. Later, he made a finer
filament for textile purposes. It was used for
crochet work.

remember this filament being made
into fringes for small mats and doilies,” says
Kenneth R. Swan, his son. These mats were
shown at the Inventions Exhibition in London
in 1885. They are still in the possession of
the Swan family. The material was at that
time called *‘ Artificial Silk.”

So, the first Artificial Silk factory in the
world was not in France. It was the Swan
laboratory at Bromley, Kent.

This laboratory became the headquarters
of a group of chemists and inventors—Stern,
Topham, Wynne, Powell and others. It was
here that Swan invented denitration, so that
the filaments were non-inflammable. His
process was adopted by Chardonnet. And
it was here that Fred Topham invented the
centrifugal spinning-box—a very clever invention
 that has been priceless to Artificial
Silk manufacturers.

After Swan and his group of inventors,

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