Count Hilaire de Chardonnet – This French chemist was the inventor of “artificial silk” as he referred to it at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. Two years later, he built the first commercial Rayon plant at Besancon, France, which was the first commercial production of man-made fabric and thus secured his fame as the ‘father of Rayon industry’.

Several attempts to produce ‘artificial silk’ took place in the US, a country that was set to dominate synthetic fibers in the new century, but none were commercially successful until the American Viscose Company formed by Samuel Courtaulds and Co Ltd began its production of Rayon in 1910.[ref]Andy Kirkpatrick[/ref]