Chlorine bleaching and bleaching powder
Blanqueo con cloro y polvo de blanqueo
- Date
- 1785-1799 · confidence high
- Place
- Glasgow (St Rollox), Scotland, United Kingdom; Javel (Paris), France
- Credited to
- Claude-Louis Berthollet (Javel water, 1785); Charles Tennant and Charles Macintosh (chloride of lime, 1799)
- People
- 👤 Charles Macintosh1766–1843👤 Charles Tennant1768–1838👤 Claude Louis Berthollet1748–1822
- Field
- Matter & energy
What it is
Bleaching cloth with chlorine in hours instead of months laid out on the grass in the sun, and its solid, transportable form (chloride of lime) manufactured at St Rollox, the largest chemical works in the world in 1830. It removed the bottleneck in textile finishing.
Berthollet developed Javel water in 1785; Tennant patented bleaching powder in 1799 and founded St Rollox in 1800.
What it led to
- Textile finishing at the scale of mechanised spinning
- The chemical industry of Glasgow and Merseyside
- Chlorine disinfection (Semmelweis, water treatment)
- Domestic bleach
Built on
- Leblanc process (soda ash)1791
- Discovery of chlorine (Scheele, 1774)
- Grass bleaching
Made possible
- Dry cleaning with solvents1845
- Water chlorination
- Paper bleaching
- Household bleach