ABSTRACT
French inventor-entrepreneur, Count Chardonnet, to suspend production of his new nitrocellulose rayon in Besançpn. Like Parkes, Chardonnet could claim to be a pioneer, but he too launched production (in 1884) before his product was in a satisfactory state. The fibre was weak and brittle and the available textile machinery was not adapted to it. However, Chardonnet had the resources to persist and was able to resume production in France and Germany in the 1890s. But viscose rayon and cellulose acetate later proved far more successful than the original nitrocellulose rayon. The viscose process was the invention of a British consulting chemist, C. G. Cross, in 1892, but it was some time before a spinning technique was developed.
