In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean breaks down the history of nitrocellulose. This thick, transparent liquid was the world’s first plastic and could be shaped into anything, including billiard balls and photography film. With nitrocellulose film, you could run reels of pictures together quickly, which gave birth to the first movies.
The only fatal flaw with this plastic is that it’s also extremely combustible—so much so that it can burn underwater once it gets going. This led to notable tragedies in movie theaters, as well as in hospitals that used nitrocellulose X-rays such as the Cleveland Clinic Hospital, where 122 people died in a fire in 1929.
CreditsHost: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
Exploring 'Health Equity Tourism'
The Mothers of Gynecology
Correcting Race
"That Rotten Spot"
Black Pills
Bad Blood, Bad Science
The African Burial Ground
Return, Rebury, Repatriate
The Vampire Project
Keepers of the Flame
Calamity in Philadelphia
BONUS EPISODE: Cheddar Man
Origin Stories
New Season Trailer! Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race
Mechanochemistry
Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius as Written by Our Genetic Code
The Sinister Angel Singers of Rome
Disappearing Spoon: The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association
The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer
Disappearing Spoon: The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
The Rest Is History
Lore