It is a great honor to be here with you today as we come to enjoy this “2000 Conference on Celluloid.”  It is also a great pleasure to meet with so many who share my interest in a subject that has captured my attention for so many years.  I come here not only to speak of my interest but to learn from those of you who have been engaged with celluloid in it’s so many forms.  We honor a material today that has endured for nearly 133 years! 

My introduction to celluloid came as I entered my father-in-law’s machine business in Leominster, Massachusetts after my graduation from college.  Living in that community which at times has been called “the Comb City,” “the Celluloid City and “the Plastic City”, our business was to provide machining services, tool’s and small machines to plastics Firms for over 63 years.  My years in that business brought me into contact with plastics industries and their individual histories.  Always interested in history I coupled that interest with cellulose nitrate or celluloid.

This background induced me to collect celluloid artifacts.  Many of the pieces collected were made here in Japan.  This interest prompted me to co-author the book “Celluloid Collector’s reference and Value Guide”.  You have purchased the book with great enthusiasm for which we are grateful.  We thank you.  The book has sold over 4000 copies and it is now in its second edition with revisal values as a guide to collection.

 Since retiring from business I have been with the National Plastics Center and Museum located in Leominster, Mass. where we are in our eighth year.  I serve there as the curator or as “plastorian”, a word that I may have coined to describe my duties and interest.

 I cannot speak on celluloid or cellulose nitrate without also speaking of John Wesley Hyatt who has been “the First Commercially Successful semi-synthetic plastic” in 1868.  “Semi-synthetic because the material contained a form of cellulose, a natural ingredient.

 I say this because an carrier cellulose nitrate product was attempted by the Englishman Alexander Parkes which was not as success because the material was made of the cheapest ingredients to be found.  The Parkesine Co. fainted after only two years.

Hyatt was not a chemist but rather an inventor.  He was the holder of nearly two hundred patents, those patents were for a great variety of products including those for treatment, aeration and filtration of water.  Patents were also awarded for lamp wicks, playing cards, emery wheels, a knife sharpener piano keys, dental plates, billiard balls, shirt collars and cuffs, and the Hyatt roller bearings to name just a few.

I am pleased to tell you that the National Plastic Center and Museum was recently bequeathed the Perkin Gold Medal which was awarded in 1914 to John Wesley Hyatt by the society of the Chemical Industry.  The medal was made of over thirteen ounces of gold.  For obvious reason I could only bring you some photographs of the medal.  Included in the bequest was a copy of Hyatt’s acceptance speech, a gold mechanical pencil by Tiffany inscribed to Hyatt, and two volumes of the original patents awarded to Hyatt.  The first was dated 1863 and it was handwritten.  These items were bequeathed to the museum by John Wesley Hyatt’s great grandson at the suggestion of my co-author, Julie Robinson.  The plastics museum is now preparing a suitable exhibit of these priceless items.

Japan was important to celluloid in that camphor was an essential ingredient of the material and this natural substance was obtained from the heart of the camphor tree which was found chiefly in Formosa which was Japanese at the time.  Your country enjoyed an Imperial monopoly on camphor which allowed Japan to control the price of the ingredient to its competition.  This monopoly caused two American Co. to attempt the growing of camphor threes on thousands of acres in Flolida at Satsuma and at Waller.  That attempt was short lived in that an insect called a thrip came to enjoy eating the camphor leaves.  The attempt at cultivation of the natural product was abandoned at a great loss.  As with many shortages of a particular natural product, ingenuity came to the foie with the Germans developing a synthetic camphor soon Followed by American versions.

What of celluloid now?  At one point there were said to be over thirty thousand products made of celluloid.  Today there are very few products being made of the material.  Notable are guitar picks and pick guards, fountain pens, table tennis or “ping-ping” balls.  No celluloid is now made in the United States although we still make some products of celluloid imported from Italy.  I believe that the material is still made in Japan, China, and Germany.  Perhaps elsewhere, information on the location of sources worldwide is difficult to come by.  Any help in determining exact sources of manufacture would be welcome by me and by others.

There is much to say of celluloid history in my allotted time but I hope to converse with many of you so that I may learn from you.

In conclusion I must mention that I couldn’t be here today without the assistance and encouragement of my fine friend Isao Iwai and his committee who arranged this event and enabled me to attend.  It has been a great opportunity to see and to learn.  My most heartfelt thanks to all of you.  I regret that my constant companion, Dawn Spinqla, had planned to enjoy this visiting with me but physical conditions would not allow the walking involved at this time.  She sends her regards and thanks for your kind invitation perhap at another time.

Thank you all for your hospitality and kind attention!

Keith W. Lauer

My thank for marking this all possible,