Discovered It Cellophane Bags

Jacques E. Brandenberger did not become famous while he was still alive, even though he was the inventor who unfolded the discovery of cellophane bags. Perhaps the main reason for this was the fact that when he discovered it, cellophane bags were not seen as ideal for food storage, instead they were perceived as an unreliable material. A few years later, cellophane became popular and companies started to seek the material in order to incorporate it to their products, not without first trying to discredit him for the discovery. Despite being a genius, Brandenberger had to withstand a lot of criticism coming from fellow inventors and from those who worked at the companies that were after cellophane.

First Film That Inspired Cellophane

It was in the year 1900 when Brandenberger was seated in a restaurant and saw wine spilled over the table cloth right in front of him; he observed how the wine was absorbed by the cloth and created a stain. The waiter then came to the rescue and replaced the spoiled table cloth with a new one, but meanwhile, Brandenberger thought about how the incident could have been avoided if the table cloth was liquid proof. He then went to the comfort of his home and thought of ways on how to transform the table cloth into a liquid proof material, until he eventually discovered it cellophane bags.

On his first attempt he made use of what is known as the chemical rayon, where a viscous liquid was sprayed to the cloth until it becamestiff. When Brandenberger tried to spill liquid on it, the liquid was not absorbed by the cloth at all because he successfully made it liquid proof. Nevertheless, this idea didn’t convince restaurant owners because they didn’t want to place stiff table cloths on their tables, since they were supposed to be soft to the touch. Moreover, this encouraged Brandenberger to continue with his experiments until he discovered that the stiffened liquid became a transparent thin film when separated from the cloth.  His hard work finally showed fruits in 1908 when he started to manufacture this thin film, which later gave way to the massive production of cellophane bags.

The Successful Use of the Cellophane Bags

• Initially, the discovery of cellophane was not taken seriously and that’s why it was until a decade later that Brandenberger was able to market it in the United States.
• After Brandenberger discovered it cellophane bags, his patent gave interests to organizations like La Cellophane SocieteAnonyme.
• Eventually, Brandenbergerassigned his patent to the organization and joined them.
• Brandenberg’s cellophane bags were bought by Whitman’s Candy Company and started importing them from France to the US until 1924.

Brandenberger and Charch

Du Pont, a US based cellophane company, became a licensed manufacturer of the material in the United States in 1923. Eventually, even though Brandenberger had discovered it cellophane bags, Du Pont hired a chemist by the name of William H. Charch who spent about three years developing a different kind of cellophane material with moisture proof. This made cellophane a lot more attractive because it could be used to wrap food and edibles without letting bacteria grow.

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