A Survey of Plastic Materials for Students: A Guide to their Manufacture, Characteristics, Properties and Uses Available to Purchase

IN 1865, Alexander Parkes, of Birmingham, found that the potential explosive nitrocellulose could be plasticized by being mixed with camphor and alcohol, and thus was discovered the ‘celluloid’ named, after its originator, ‘Parkesite’, the forefrunner of ‘Xylonite’. This discovery was the beginning of the plastics industry which has, in only eighty years or so, grown to be one of the major industries; so much so, in fact, that the Twentieth Century has been referred to, by some enthusiasts, as the ‘Plastics Age’.