Daniel Spill was early plastics inventor and entrepreneur.

In 1866 Spill and inventor Alexander Parkes opened The Parkesine Co., Ltd. at Hackney wick, London. The company failed and was liquidated in 1868. In 1869 Spill founded the Xylonite Company in the closed Parkesine Works, and modified the Parkesine formula.

In 1875 Spill sued the Celluloid Manufacturing Company and John Wesley Hyatt for alledged patent infringement, charging that Hyatt had violated Spill's patent by using camphor as a plasticizer. In 1880, after five years of litigation, Judge C.J. Blanchard of the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York found in Spill's favor.

Spill then sold his now-validated patents to paper manufacturer Leroy L. Brown of North Adams, Massachusetts, who then founded the American Zylonite Company in 1881 (despite the difference in spelling the name of the product is pronounced the same) to manufacture Xylonite under license from the British company. Unfortuantely for Brown, Judge Blanchard reversed his opinion in 1884, bringing eventual ruin to the new company.

See:

Friedel, Robert Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), 10-12.

Lauer, Keith & Robinson, Julie. Celluloid: Collector’s Reference and Value Guide (Paducah, KY: Collector’s Books, 1999.), 16, 21-23.