It is reported that casein, the protein in milk, was used by the ancient Egyptians of the eighteenth dynasty as a medium for fixing pigments but there appears to be no recorded attempts to use casein as the basis of a solid material until the late 1800s. Those first attempts were probably thwarted by dimensional stability problems and biological deterioration, but the discovery of the hardening effect of formaldehyde on casein was the breakthrough which led to casein plastics. There is a story, probably untrue that a cat, left in a laboratory overnight, upset a bottle of formalin into its milk saucer, but most likely the discovery was linked to attempts to stop deterioration, since formalin was then widely used to preserve biological specimens.

Krische, head of a large firm of printers in Hanover, Germany was looking to waterproof paperboard in an attempt to replace the slate and chalk used in schools with a washable white board and pencil. He collaborated with Adolf Spitteler, a chemist in Bavaria and a patent for plastic compositions was taken out in Germany on July 15th 1899.

The patent was taken up by firms in Germany (Vereinigten Gummivarenfabriken, at its factory in Harburg) and in France by Pellerin and Orosdi (Compagnie Francaise de la Galalithe, at Levallois Perret). The product was introduced under the trade name GALALITH and was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900. A lot of development work was still required to produce a stable material, and the two companies merged in 1904 to form the International Galalith Gesellschaft Hoff and Company with a new factory in Harburg. They held the rights to the 'dry process' for manufacturing casein plastics from rennet casein.

The history of the development of casein in the UK is no less interesting. In 1909 a Russian student, Victor Schutze, from Riga, patented a process for the manufacture of a solid plastics material from milk curds: this became known as the 'wet process'. The patent was finally granted in 1911 and a company was formed to exploit the patent and the name SYROLIT was chosen. They set up premises in a disused cloth mill in Stroud, Gloucestershire. The patent shows that the wet process is long and costly (milk contains only about 3% of casein) and the capital was soon whittled away so that by 1913 the company was bankrupt. The main source of supply for skimmed milk was the Condensed Milk Co. of Ireland which, probably as a salvage operation in its own interest, was on the point of taking over what remained and starting a new company in Ireland to make a material which would be called ERINOID. One of the founders of Syrolit was UA Cleeve (incidently, related to the Cleeve family of toffee makers). He realised that for the company to succeed the manufacturing method would have to be changed to the 'dry process', an idea he may have got from E. Petersen when he met him at the 1912 Paris Exhibition. Petersen was engaged to establish the Erinoid factory in the Syrolit premises at Stroud.

An intermediate, semi-dry process was worked for a while at a premises in Croydon, making NEOLYTE. This process started with dry casein which was then boiled in water and worked as a dough. This overcame some of the problems associated with the wet process, i.e. working with large quantities of liquid and problems with freshness. This business was run by Robert Dodd until the mid 1920s when he joined Erinoid taking some of his experienced workforce with him - he later became Works Manager, Technical Director and Managing Director of Erinoid.

In the United States the first successful casein plastics material was produced by Christensen about 1919 and sold under the name ALADDINITE. In 1924, KAROLITH was produced followed by KYLOID, INDA and ERINOID by a subsidiary of the English company.

Casein did not achieve the same success in the US as it did in Europe - probably because the manufacturing process did not lend itself to the more mechanised American scene. Also, many European applications were denied because of the different climatic conditions and greater competition from cast phenolic resins. Starting in about 1928 many casein manufacturing plants joined forces with button manufacturers to make casein directly into buttons. This included button manufacturer George Morrell who took over Kyloid, and Aladdinite who joined the Button Corporation of America. In 1931 Karolith Corporation, Erinoid Company of America, American Machine & Foundry Company and Pan plastics Corporation merged their casein interests to form the American Plastics Corporation to produce casein under the name AMEROID.

Platignum propelling pencils in Erinoid