History

After man lost his natural fur in the course of evolution, clothing became as vitally important as food and housing. The first clothes consisted of simple pelts and were worn some 135 000 years ago in the Middle Stone Age. Soon this type of clothes was no longer sufficient, and man started using fibres from natural plants for clothing purposes.

With the rising quality of life and the growing world population, the consumption and the demand for textiles went up continually. At the same time, the population had to be fed so that a conflict of interests arose, i.e. how to use available agricultural land. Finally, priority was given to food-producing agriculture in order to ensure direct survival – to the detriment of sheep farming and flax cultivation.

Consequently, only continually decreasing areas were available in Europe for the cultivation of renewable resources for the textile industry, so that the demand in Europe could be no longer fully covered with textile raw materials from this continent. Thus raw sheep wool imported from Australia became ever more important. Linen – that had been obtained from flax cultivation – was gradually replaced by cotton which, however, grows only in subtropical to tropical climates.

Most probably, the wish to be independent from transcontinental renewable resources was getting stronger due to military conflicts – which frequently interrupted transatlantic transport routes. Furthermore, requirements to textiles became more sophisticated. As late as in the 19th century, the conflict between agricultural land for food production or for plant growing for clothing purposes was still unsolved. This is understandable when considering that statistically one person would need ca. 1 hectare of fertile land if this person was to resort exclusively to natural products. In view of the growing population it is easy to see why other solutions had to be found to cover the demand for textiles, due to the lack of agricultural areas.

As early as in 1665 the Englishman Robert Hooke had the idea to produce artificial fibres from viscous mass. However, it was a long way with many failures before this idea became reality. For over two centuries the aim defined by Hooke was merely seen as fantastic utopia.

In 1845 Christian Friedrich Schönbein dissolved trinitrocellulose ('gun cotton') in alcohol ether, producing collodium. Artificial fibres were produced from this solution for the first time in 1855 by the Swiss Audemars.

Based on these experiments, Count Hilaire de Chardonnet achieved between 1878 and 1884 the breakthrough in the manufacture of the first natural man-made fibre ('artificial silk', 'rayon') from dissolved dinitrocellulose, which was produced industrially from 1890 – followed by the manufacture of 'copper rayon' from a solution of cellulose in copper oxide ammonia for which, however, relatively costly cotton linters (3.5 mm hairs on cotton seed capsules) were needed as raw materials.

Important to this day are the manufacture of viscose fibres from cellulose xanthogenate soluble in sodium hydroxide which became possible in 1885, and the acetylation of cellulose (cellulose triacetate) which was first performed successfully in 1865. From 1919 this material was spun into acetate silk on industrial scale, by way of partial saponification.

Total independence from the natural raw material cellulose was achieved with synthetic fibres such as e.g. Polyamide 66 ('Nylon', 1935), Polyamide 6 ('Perlon', 1938), Polyacrylnitril e (1942), Polyester (1941) or Elastan (1958).

After World War II the triumph of man-made fibres was unstoppable. With the start of mass production of successful fibres - such as Polyacryl, Polyamide, Polyester, Elastan and Viscose – people's quality and feeling of life improved perceptibly.

That ended the competition between agriculture and clothing industries for limited farmland. Rising fibre production was no longer to the detriment of the population's food situation.