The Savannah morning news., 1901-03-30
ARTIFICIAL SILK.
1t is Made From Cotton and From
Glue.

Glue.
OIarvey Sutherland in Ainslee's.)
Cotton has often masqueraded as silk,
but it seems rather queer that it can be
made into real silk. The nitrated cotton
is put into a cylinder with ether-alcohoi
and slowly revolved for twelve hours.
Then, under a pressure of forty-hve at
mospheres it is squirted out of glass
tubes whose bore is 1900 of an inch.
The air soldifies the threads as they
are carried along on moving belts. They
are fine as silkworm filaments and as lus-
trous They take dyes well, buJ they
are so infiammable as to be almost ex~
plosive obviously a fatal defect. Just
here is where the modern chemist shows
the kind of creature he is and what his
principles are. l don't know what you
think of a man that deliberately, and to
compass his own selfish ends, takes adj
vantage of the little weaknesses of the
clements and introduces a tempter into
peaceful chemical combinations to lead
astray some members. Such men exist.
They get their living by such tricks. They
even hold up their heads and call them
selves respectable. Here is this nitryl
living happily, so far as we know, with
cellulose, and along comes the chemist
and brings in a Sinking, stylish Lothario
of a sulphydrate of calcium and away
goes the giddy, deluded nitryl, leaning
on his arm just like the poor lady In East
Lynne All that the deserted artificial
silk can do after that is to look pretty.
1t never plucks up the courage to ex-
plode. Well, it's a queer world.
zone of the uses of this modification OF
the cottony, pithy structure found in all
vegetables is to spin 1t into threads ana
char il for the luminous loops in mean
descent lamps. Also when woven into a
kind of bobbinet and impregnated with
the oxides of thorium and cerium II
makes the mantle of the Welsbach light.
Artificial silk can be made out Of glue,
thus demonstrating that our ancestors
were not so foolish and ignorant as we
like to think. So far as we can judge,
there was no reason why they should
not have made the proverb read: You
can't make a salk purse out of a cows
heel But they didn't say that. They
used another smile. They were smart
enough. After taking all the trouble to
make a proverb, they did not propose to
have science get the laugh on them by
making silk out of cows hoofs and horns.
The gelatine is dissolved in water to
the proper consistency, with the cellulose
silk. It is really an animal product like
the silkworm silk, but the manufacturers
have not yet been able to get the appli-
ances for water-proofing the thread with
the vapor of formaline that the silkworm
has which secrets the same drug for the
same purpose. Also. it is quite difficult
to dry the thread quickly on the carrying
belts, for you can easily see that they
cannot be made very long. 1 suppose
every one that reads this will instantly
think It would be easy to dry the threads
II the, room was made very warm, but,
unfortunately warmth and moisture to-
gether have the property of making the
glue softer. Another difficulty is that
the silk must be dyed before it is spun,
and as gelatine has a way of not being
the same shade for the same quality Of
sickness, it is pretty hard to tell what
color you will get till it is dry. If the
spun threads are soaked in the dye-pot
the stuff thinks that this Is a new way of
making wine jelly and makes all possible
haste to change itself from dress goods
into dessert. Still. 1t makes a very pref
ty silk If you don't wear it out in a rain
storm"