science · 12 March 1924 · 100 years ago
death
Died 12 Mar 1924 at age 84 (born 1 May 1839).
Count (Louis-Marie-) Hilaire Bernigaud Chardonnet was a French chemist and industrialist who first developed rayon, the first commonly used artificial fibre. When it was first displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1891 it was called Chardonnet silk, and caused a sensation. Although trained as a civil engineer, he went to work under Louis Pasteur. Chardonnet was prompted by Pasteur's study of diseases in silkworms to seek an artificial replacement for silk. His starting point was mulberry leaves, the food of silkworms. He turned them into a cellulose pulp with nitric and sulphuric acids and stretched it into fibres. The original fibre was highly flammable, but by 1889 he had eliminated this and developed rayon. He opened factories for its manufacture.
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