Why an alternative to real silk would be desirable

Real silk has always been very expensive partly because the main producers were in the far east and North America and the silk had to be transported over long distances, by the end of the Nineteen century several other factors started to effect the cost of silks and pushing the price up.

a) The silkworm disease in Europe (1855 -1870).
b) The Taiping Rebellion in China (1850-1864).

So there was great interest in finding a cheaper alternative to natural silk and of course for anyone who was successful there would clearly be a handsome profit to be made.

Viscose - The new wonder fibre

Viscose was discovered by Joseph Wilson Swan in 1850, an English chemist who was working on developing the electric light bulb. Swan needed a fine fibre for the filament of his new electric light bulb; he first came up with a fibre made from cellulose nitrate which is derived from the naturally occurring cellulose made from extracted wood pulp.
Hannah Swan became interested in this fibre and started using it for her crochet work, Hannah called this fabric 'artificial silk'.
Unfortunately cellulose nitrate was not found to be a practical solution for Joseph for his electric bulb because viscose was slightly explosive after more work he found that a carbonized bamboo filament had significantly better results for him.


Work continued on this new artificial silk fibre by other scientist Count Hilaire de Chardonnet (French chemist) achieving the first full scale production of Viscose in 1889, his fabrics of artificial silk caused a sensation at the Paris Exhibition.
Two years later he built the first commercial rayon plant at Besancon, France, however his cloth was also slightly inflammable and sales of it declined when the public realized this in flammability of from it.
Until three British inventors, Cross, Bevan and Beadle, patented a way of making a safe artificial silk in 1892.
Apart from fabric Cross, Bevan and Beadle, tried to make solid object out of viscose like umbrella handles with Viscose which turned out to be too brittle, further development made it possible to spin the fibre into thread for embroidery and trimmings probably this work was carried out by Courtaulds textile company. The term "spin" is often used in the context of Viscose , this is not the same technique as the in the textile mill with cotton or wool.

The British patents for artificial silk were taken over by Courtaulds in 1904 for approximately £25,000, they produced the first commercial fibre in 1905 in a factory on the outskirts of Coventry (UK).