Lectures on cellulose / C.F. Cross.

  • Charles Frederick Cross
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lectures on cellulose / C.F. Cross. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/60
    materials, in which their structural and essential chemical characteristics are maintained, and leaving altogether out of account the part played by cellulose as a fundamental con- stituent of all agricultural and gardening produce, we pass to the group of cellulose derivatives. As certainly derived in the main from cellulose by processes of regulated destruction, in effect of constructive destruction, we must mention coal, of which our own production reaches the colossal total of 250,000,000 tons per annum, in value, say, £ 150,000,000. From such figures and their indirect consequences, upon which we need not dilate, it seems an anti-climax to pass to the nitro-celluloses, which, on the other hand, are direct derivatives. But if coal dominates the productive and con- structive life of an industrial community, its powers of offence and defence under modern conditions of life are in an important sense dependent upon nitro-cellulose powders. Without assigning a money value to the industry in explosives, they have an importance sui generis and self-evident. The nitro-celluloses are the essential component of celluloid and xylonite, and in the form of films are indispensable to photography in all departments; these applications of cellulose represent not merely large industrial values, but contributions of useful and aesthetic effects, not to be comprehended in trade returns. It is quite unnecessary to labour this theme to impress its consequences upon this audience. Summing up our sketch, it is clear that qua productive industries, cellulose occupies a first position and has only one rival in respect of magnitude, which is iron (and steel), with the engineering industries connoted by those comprehensive terms, the gross figures of our production in this sphere approaching ^*400,000,000. Even the fermentation industries, at a gross figure of, say,
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