This article was first published in 听
I searched eBay for a 鈥渘evalyaska.鈥� I just had to have one because of the fascinating story I came across about this little doll鈥檚 origin in the Soviet Union.
The doll, sometimes called a roly-poly, wobbles when pushed but never falls over, instead righting itself due to a heavy, weighted base. It was not the physics of the doll that particularly intrigued me, it was its chemistry. Nevalyaskas, meaning 鈥渙ne who doesn鈥檛 fall over,鈥� were originally made of celluloid, a material with which听, due to its history as the world鈥檚 first manmade plastic. I have a small collection of vintage celluloid items that were just waiting to welcome a nevalyaska.
The story that caught my attention was that the dolls were not made by a toy company, but were produced by a Soviet gunpowder manufacturer. The Tambov Gunpowder Plant was producing more gunpowder than the military needed and looked for a way to monetize the excess. One idea was to convert the gunpowder into celluloid, a moldable plastic with a complicated history that traces back to the 1800s.
Who gets credit for the invention: Englishman Alexander Parkes or American John Wesley Hyatt? As is the case with almost every invention, there is a story to be told. The proverbial bulb that lights up in the inventor鈥檚 mind includes components invented by others.
The initial step leading to the formulation of plastic was taken in 1832 by Henri Braconnot in France with his discovery that treating starch or wood fibres with nitric acid produces a combustible material that he called Xyloidine. Although he didn鈥檛 understand the chemistry at the time, the flammable substance was a mixture of nitrated starch and nitrated cellulose formed when starch or cellulose react with nitric acid.
In 1846, German-Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schonbein accidentally discovered a more practical formulation by treating cotton with a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acids. As the story goes, he was carrying out experiments at home when he spilled the acids and proceeded to wipe up the mess with his wife鈥檚 cotton apron. He was stunned when he hung the wet apron in front of the fireplace to dry: It burst into flame and disappeared without producing any smoke. Schonbein knew smoke obscured targets on the battlefield, and capitalized on his chance discovery by making a pure version of nitrocellulose, which came to be known as 鈥済uncotton.鈥� It changed the face of warfare.
By the American Civil War in 1861, methods were developed to launch cannonballs with guncotton. In his classic 1865 sci-fi novel From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne听used guncotton as the propellant in the giant cannon that launched a capsule towards the moon. Then in 1884, French chemist Paul Vieille found a way to grind guncotton into a powder that could be used in firearms ammunition. This 鈥渟mokeless powder鈥� is still used as the propellant in modern bullets.
Soon after Schonbein鈥檚 discovery, Louis-Nicolas Menard found that nitrocellulose dissolves in a mixture of ether and alcohol to form a gelatinous liquid that was dubbed 鈥渃ollodion鈥� 鈥� from the Greek for 鈥済luey.鈥� Critical to the development of plastics was the discovery that when collodion dries, it leaves behind a flexible film. Boston physician John Parker Maynard found a use for this film, as a dressing on wounds.
Meanwhile, Parkes had been trying to develop coatings to make fabrics waterproof and thought collodion would be worth trying. He experimented with adding various substances to collodion and discovered that mixing it with methanol and vegetable oil allowed collodion to harden into a mass that could be heated and molded into objects. It occurred to Parkes that this substance could replace ivory, tortoiseshell or rubber, which were in short supply. By 1862, Parkes was able to showcase his Parkesine听at the International Exhibition in London, where he was awarded a bronze medal for his efforts.
Unfortunately, it turned out that objects made of Parkesine warped and became brittle with time. This is when American inventor听Hyatt, who was trying to find a substitute for听, stepped into the picture.
Hyatt discovered that adding camphor to collodion produced a moldable material that did not become brittle with time. In 1870, he and his brother Isaiah patented a process using collodion and camphor to make a 鈥渉orn-like material鈥� that they eventually named 鈥渃elluloid.鈥� The Hyatts鈥� patent did not credit Parkes in any way, but it is almost certain they knew about Parkesine, which Parkes had patented in the 1850s. Parkesine was discussed in technical journals and had prompted chemists on both sides of the Atlantic to experiment with improvements.
English inventor Daniel Spill, who had taken over Parkes鈥檚 company and was producing a version of Parkesine he called Xylonite, claimed that Parkes had mentioned camphor in one of his patents and therefore the Hyatts鈥� patent was invalid. This led to a number of lawsuits, with the courts eventually deciding that party had an exclusive claim to the novel plastic, and both could continue to produce and profit from it. The judgment concluded that while Parkes had discovered the original material that could be molded into plastic, it was John Wesley Hyatt who developed the process for making celluloid commercially successful. In London, there is a plaque on the building where Parkesine was first made, claiming it as the world鈥檚 first plastic. A similar plaque in Albany makes the same claim for Hyatt鈥檚 celluloid.
Today, celluloid has been replaced by superior non-flammable plastics, but it still finds some rare uses. Guitar picks made of celluloid have just the right flexibility, and it is used as a coating on some string instruments because apparently wood responds better to the vibrations of the strings. Until 2014, ping-pong balls were made of celluloid, but the industry switched to acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) because of safety concerns about transporting flammable celluloid.
The same concern led to the Tambov plant abandoning the use of celluloid to make nevalyaskas, but the dolls were so profitable that they kept making them 鈥� from non-flammable polyvinyl chloride (PVC). I, of course, wanted one of the original celluloid ones and managed to find a Ukrainian seller on eBay. My celluloid nevalyaska now sits beside my celluloid ping-pong ball and celluloid toy automobile.
The Soviet Union may have been toppled, but my little doll keeps springing back up when pushed over.
