CELLULOID
According to history, the celluloid
discovery is linked to 3 events:
- The Secession war and an embargo
on natural ivory imports.
- Two wealthy snooker players who,
frustrated by this embargo, organized a competition
to find the best substitute to ivory.
- A contestant, John Wesley Hyatt,
whose brother managed to create celluloid in 1870
(mainly made up of cellulose nitrate and camphor).
Later on, around 1884, the paternity
of this discovery will be attributed to a British inventor,
Alexander Parkes, who carried out similar experiences
a few years earlier (1856: Parkesine).
Celluloid is considered as the very first artificial
plastic and it is still used nowadays, in the making
of ping-pong balls for example.
Characteristics:
Celluloid is very robust and can be easily coloured.
When scrubbing a celluloid pen to polish it, you instantly
have a strong camphor smell.
WARNING!!
Celluloid is extremely flammable…!
If you want to split the nib’s feeding tank from
the body of a celluloid pen, you must take extra care
(soak the tank in cold water or use a hair-dryer).
Also, for some colours (like jade green), there are
real risks of pen’s bleaching and you must then
either use a non-noxious ink tank or not use your pen!
About pens:
As soon as celluloid appeared, the colour was used
on pens.
The colour range was not very wide in the beginning
(yellow, black, red, orange and green), with types
like Permanite (Parker) or Radite (Sheaffer). Great
efforts were made to advertise the sturdiness of the
products (Parker, for instance, threw pens out of planes,
or from the top of buildings).
Sheaffer flat
top jade green
GALALITH : Thanks to the cows !
History and
production
History is sometimes amazing … in pharaohs’ ancient
Egypt casein (the milk protein) was already playing
an essential role for writing by fixing ink on parchments.
But if you let a milk bottle open during several weeks,
you will easily understand why the non-degradation
of casein gave a real headache to the inventors of
Galalith.
How to replace the traditional blackboards
and chalks by an erasable synthetic material in … 1900
! Krische (a German printer) and Spitteler (an Austrian
chemist) worked on it and filed the first patent in
1889.
The French chemist Jean-Jacques Trillat put the finishing
touches when he discovered the way to make casein insoluble
by adding formalin (immersion process), thus making
possible the preservation of this matter.
To make it short, you take one litre of milk, containing
about 30g of casein, you add formalin and colourings … and
you get Galalith.
This new plastic was presented at Paris Universal Exhibition
in 1900 !
Characteristics:
In France, Galalith was distributed by the Compagnie
Française de Galalithe located near Paris in
Levallois-Perret. The Jura area became the first one
to use this matter in the making of several products:
buttons, pens, jewellery, umbrella handles, …
Galalith was available in the form of rolls or plates.
Thanks to its natural porosity, the manufacturers could
easily colour it. However, since it could not be moulded,
this matter requested an important work of polishing,
either manual or mechanical, in order to make it shine.
It became famous for its ability to imitate ivory,
amber, horn, tortoiseshell, wood, …
However, its cost as well as the development of other
plastics led to its disappearance.
About pens:
Most of the pens manufacturers used Galalith; Parker
even renamed it Ivoirine (Ivory). When rubbing a Galalith
pen, a characteristic smell will emanate from it. In
the past, some even said that during strong heats the
pen would get a smell of sour milk (I personally never
noticed that).
Casein tends to degrade over a long period of time;
some cracks might appear and the colour might fade.
However, I must point out that these problems do not
occur with modern Galalith pens, thanks to new technologies.
With old models, the main worry is linked to porosity,
since a leak in the ink bag might result in the ink’s
diffusion and a colouring of the pen’s body.
You might polish manually a Galalith pen as long as
you use a neutral paste (non coloured). The storage
precautions are the same as the one used for Ebonite
pens (away from light, heat and moisture).
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