Anthelm, Ludwig

SUBJECT AREA: Textiles

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fl. 1897, Germany

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German who used carbon tetrachloride as a dry-cleaning agent.

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Until the mid-nineteenth century, washing with soap and water was the only way to clean clothes. Around 1850 a kind of turpentine, camphene, began to be used (see J.B. Jolly- Bellin), but this necessitated taking the garments apart and resewing together after they had been cleaned. When benzene was introduced in 1866 by Pullars of Perth, Scotland, garments no longer needed to be taken apart. In 1897 Ludwig Anthelm of Leipzig started to use carbon tetrachloride (tetrachloromethane); however this was found to corrode the equipment and was dangerous to breathe, and it was replaced in Britain with trichlorethylene in 1918.

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Further Reading

I.McNeil (ed.), 1990, An Encyclopaedia of the History of Technology, London: Routledge, p. 854 (an account of the introduction of dry-cleaning).

RLH