science · 29 December 1813 · 211 years ago
birth
Born 29 Dec 1813; died 29 Jun 1890 at age 76.
British industrial chemist who invented many processes. Parkes was an expert in electroplating, able to silver-plate such diverse objects as a spider web and flowers. He patented a method of rubber coating fabrics to waterproof them (1841), an electroplating process (1843), and a method of extracting silver from lead ore by adding zinc (1850). He produced the first plastic (1855), which he called Parkesine, by dissolving cellulose nitrate in alcohol and camphor containing ether. The hard solid result could be molded when heated, but he could find no market for the material. (This was rediscovered in the 1860s by John Wesley Hyatt, an American chemist, who named it celluloid and successfully marketed it as a replacement for ivory.
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