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 in- 
vention that has been priceless to Artificial 
Silk manufacturers. 
After Swan and his group of inventors, 
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