Hyatt tried mixing the collodion with ivory powder, also using it to
cover balls of the necessary weight and solidity, but they did not work
very well and besides were explosive. A Colorado saloon keeper wrote in
to complain that one of the billiard players had touched a ball with a
lighted cigar, which set it off and every man in the room had drawn his
gun.

The trouble with the dissolved guncotton was that it could not be
molded. It did not swell up and set; it merely dried up and shrunk. When
the solvent evaporated it left a wrinkled, shriveled, horny film,
satisfactory to the surgeon but not to the man who wanted to make balls
and hairpins and knife handles out of it. In England Alexander Parkes
began working on the problem in 1855 and stuck to it for ten years
before he, or rather his backers, gave up. He tried mixing in various
things to stiffen up the pyroxylin. Of these, camphor, which he tried in
1865, worked the best, but since he used castor oil to soften the mass
articles made of "parkesine" did not hold up in all weathers.

Another Englishman, Daniel Spill, an associate of Parkes, took up the
problem where he had dropped it and turned out a better product,
"xylonite," though still sticking to the idea that castor oil was
necessary to get the two solids, the guncotton and the camphor,
together.

But Hyatt, hearing that camphor could be used and not knowing enough
about what others had done to follow their false trails, simply mixed
his camphor and guncotton together without any solvent and put the
mixture in a hot press. The two solids dissolved one another and when
the press was opened there was a clear, solid, homogeneous block
of--what he named--"celluloid." The problem was solved and in the