Alexander Parkes was born in 1813 in Birmingham, growing up amidst ideology and invention although he was not specifically a chemistry and physics scholar. and this lack of scientific background was typical at this time.
Parkes worked for some time in the manufacturing of natural rubber, at a moment when great steps were being made with the discovery of vulcanization and the first machines. From this arose his interest in other substances which could give similar results to those of rubber in certain uses for which there was a constantly increasing industrial demand.
By studying cellulose nitrate, obtained in 1845 at Basle by C.F.Schönbein, Parkes developed a new material which could be
used in a solid, plastic of fluid state, which was at times rigid like ivory, opaque, flexible, water-resistant, colourable and could be used for utensils and tools like metals, compression moulding, Laminating”. Its inventor described Parkesine in these words - patented in 1861 - in a publicity handout of 1862 at the Great London Exhibition, where, for the first time, examples appeared of that which we could justly call the original plastic material, the head of a large polymer family which today has hundreds of members.
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