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Hey, Remember Celluloid?

Around the turn of the century there was a patent battle over who exactly had invented celluloid:

He was a 65-year old clergyman, not a professional chemist, but two years of tinkering in his attic laboratory finally produced a flexible film from nitrocellulose, a trademarked plastic introduced in 1869. Without a clear understanding of the chemistry involved, he filed a vaguely worded patent application.
Meanwhile, George Eastman introduced rolls of photographic film in 1888, but the rolls were made of paper. Developing the negatives was costly, time-consuming and often produced streaked or blurry images. Professional photographers and serious amateur first adopters would have none of it.
Eastman set his chemist Henry Reichenbach to develop a film medium that would be clear, light, flexible, capable of holding the photochemical emulsion, and resistant to folding, shriveling, stretching, wrinkles, blemishes, bubbles and streaks. Quite a task.
Reichenbach wound up developing a formula remarkably similar to Goodwin's, with one additional ingredient: camphor. He filed a tightly worded patent application in April 1889.

--Wired

About J. Ott

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and futurist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.