Mercerize

   John Mercer (1791-1866) worked in his father's cotton mill in Lancaster, England, and, through a fellow worker, learned to read and write when he was ten years old. John's primary interest, which had been music, changed to the art of dyeing and, because he was a handloom weaver, he worked on and invented devices that wove stripes and checks. A story that was current in young Mercer's time was that Mercer went to another town to obtain a marriage license, but while browsing at a bookstall came across James Parkinson's Chemical Pocket-book. Merely from a reading of this book, Mercer got a job as a chemist to make calico prints at a fabric printshop. Mercer wa so talented with fabrics that he was eventually admitted to partnership in the business. After thirty years the partnership was dissolved, freeing Mercer to continue his experiments. In 1850, at the age of fifty-nine, he perfected a process for treating cottons with caustic soda, sulphuric acid, and zinc chloride, which shrinks, strengthens, and gives a permanent silky luster to the fabric. Furthermore, cloth so treated made the fabric more absorbent so that it held dyes more readily.

   Mercer's process was not so successful as it might have been, however, because of the shrinkage of the fabric. He had overlooked the treating of the material under tension. Long after his death, a correction was made, and the shrinkage was virtually eliminated. But Mercer's name remained as the inventor of the treatment process. Today we say that cotton goods have been mercerized, or that we have bought a spool of mercerized cotton.