Who was Charles Macintosh? And did the Scottish chemist really invent the raincoat?
For upon |Living in Scotland before 1824 was hard. There are more rainy days than dry ones in the country, and unless you had an umbrella – a rarity at the time – going outside landed you with the serious risk of being soaked through. Most ways of waterproofing clothes at the time involved oiled fabrics, which were heavy, not to mention foul-smelling.
That was until the chemist Charles Macintosh and his invention of waterproof material, which led to the modern raincoat. Macintosh, who was born 250 years ago on Thursday, has been celebrated with a Google Doodle showing the rain bouncing off him.
How was the Macintosh raincoat invented?
Charles Macintosh’s family moved to Glasgow when he was just 11 so that…
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