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 Black- 
burn 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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