science · 23 February 1892 · 132 years ago
death
Died 23 Feb 1892 (born c. 1825).
British-born American co-inventor (1852, with Charles Watt) of the "soda" process to produce paper from wood pulp, digesting wood shavings by cooking them in a caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) solution. In 1719, Frenchman Rene de Reaumur suggested using wood to make paper, similar to the paper-like material created by North American wasps to build their nests. By 1850, when a German, Friedrich Keller, devised a grinding method to make paper from wood, the product had poorer quality than rag pulp. Burgess and Watt devised a way to separate the cellulose from the intercellular lignin matter (to render the cellulose fit for being made into paper) and to produce fibres of proper length for immediate felting into paper.
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