Ada Keith, age 13, of Twin Falls, Idaho, for her question:
WHO INVENTED CELLOPHANE?
Cellophane is a flexible, thin, moisture resistant material made from plant fibers. It was invented by a Swiss chemist named Jacques Edwin Brandenberger in 1908 while he was trying to make a stainproof tablecloth.
Brandenberger produced a smooth, shiny cloth, but it was brittle and could not be used. Later he made a thin sheet of transparent film and applied it to the cloth. In 1911 he designed a machine to produce the film he called cellophane.
The first plant to produce cellophane was located in France.
Cellophane was first produced in the United States in 1924. It was not moistureproof at first. Goods wrapped in it had'to be hand wrapped, because there were no wrapping machines. For these reasons, the first cellophane was used only to wrap luxury goods.
The cellophane industry grew fast after wrapping machines and moisture proof cellophane were developed in the 1930s.
By the early 1960s, the United States cellophane industry reached its peak production of 425 million pounds a year. The use of cellophane then began to decline in the mid 1960s because of competition from plastics and other flexible packaging materials.
In the mid 1970s, the U.S. had used about 300 million pounds of cellophane each year. Annual world use totaled about 1.25 billion pounds.
Cellophane is made from cellulose, a substance found in plant fibers. Manufacturers use a chemical process to obtain cellulose from wood. Machines mix the cellulose with carbon disufide. The mixture is then dissolved in caustic soda to form a sticky liquid called viscose.
The viscose flows through a long slit to form a thin sheet of liquid, which drops into sulfuric acid. The acid changes the sheet of liquid into cellophane. Machines dip the cellophane into liquids that remove impurities from the product and make it flexible.
About 95 percent of the cellophane made in the United States is used to package products that require protection from moisture. Cellophane forms attractive packages because it has a shiny appearance and can be printed with labels and decorative designs.
Manufacturers use nontransparent cellophane bags to package such snack foods as potato chips and pretzels. Transparent cellophane is used to protect candy and other products.
Cellophane can be laminated or stuck to aluminum foil or paper to form special wrapping materials. Other products made of cellophane include drinking straws, envelopes, ribbons and sticky tape used for mending and sealing.
Nonstransparent cellophane may be in any color. Most of the material is just one one thousandth of an inch thick.
Celluloid is a trade name for a tough transparent plastic material called callulose mitrate. It can be bent without breaking and sliced into thin sheets.