Because of its explosive nature, not all applications of nitrocellulose were successful. In 1869, with elephants having been poached to near extinction, the billiards industry offered a US$10,000 prize to whoever came up with the best replacement for ivory billiard balls. John Wesley Hyatt created the winning replacement, which he created with a new material he invented, called camphored nitrocellulose—the first thermoplastic, better known as Celluloid. The invention enjoyed a brief popularity, but the Hyatt balls were extremely flammable, and sometimes portions of the outer shell would explode upon impact. An owner of a billiard saloon in Colorado wrote to Hyatt about the explosive tendencies, saying that he did not mind very much personally but for the fact that every man in his saloon immediately pulled a gun at the sound.
the deer with the most panacheer
- They/he
i make videogames and draw and write | NSFW
in reply to @atomheart's post:
No no, please talk about bakelite. I know it doesn't get used as much as it used to but it seems like such a cool material.
I fuckin love bakelite, every so often I go on ebay and covet 1930's era objects. A lot of them look really cool when unpainted. They've got streaks and swirls like injection mold color change errors but cooler~
in reply to @atomheart's post:
I'd heard of Bakelite but never realized it was named after its inventor, I just assumed it was light and baked.
I was once watching a video about Celluloid and all of it's dangers, and heard that a Saloon owner in Colorado wrote a complaint letter to a US manufacturer of the stuff; apparently the celluloid billiard balls he had would sometimes explode during games!
Also don't forget that the celluloid stuff degraded over time into more dangerous and sensitive compounds, which is part of why we've lost huge chunks of film history. (The FOX Vault fire along got rid of almost the entire output of some stars!) As a bonus, once nitrocellulose starts burning, it produces its own oxygen.
Also Bakelite is amazing to the point that I periodically go on Alibaba to try and source a vessel that (i) isn't ruinously expensive and (ii) can reach the necessary pressures to enable small-scale production. If you love the tones you can get with the stuff and want to be a bit jealous, poke around on YT -- there's a Brazilian artist (IIR) who has sourced a small warehouse full of surviving sheets and rods of old stock bakelite from producers that have long since gone out of business. Jewel tones, emulations of other substances, all sorts of amazing stuff.