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Soapmaking was an established
craft in Europe by the seventh
century. Soapmaker guilds guarded
their trade secrets closely.
Vegetable and animal oils were
used with ashes of plants, along
with fragrance. Gradually more
varieties of soap became available
for shaving and shampooing, as
well as bathing and laundering.
Italy, Spain and France were early
centers of soap manufacturing, due
to their ready supply of raw materials such
as oil from olive trees. The English began
making soap during the 12th century. The
soap business was so good that in 1622,
King James I granted a monopoly to a
soapmaker for $100,000 a year. Well into
the 19th century, soap was heavily taxed
as a luxury item in several countries.
When the high tax was removed, soap
became available to ordinary people, and
cleanliness standards improved.
Commercial soapmaking in the American colonies began in 1608
with the arrival of several soapmakers on
the second ship from England to reach
Jamestown, VA. However, for many
years, soapmaking stayed essentially a
household chore. Eventually, professional
soapmakers began regularly collecting
waste fats from households, in exchange
for some soap.
A major step toward large-scale
commercial soapmaking occurred
in 1791 when a French chemist,
Nicholas Leblanc, patented a process for
making soda ash, or sodium carbonate,
from common salt. Soda ash is the alkali
obtained from ashes that combines
with fat to form soap.
The Leblanc process
yielded quantities
of good quality,
inexpensive
soda ash.
The science of modern
soapmaking was bom some
20 years later with the discovery by
Michel Eugene Chevreul, another
French chemist,
of the chemical
nature and
relationship of
fats, glycerine
and fatty acids.
His studies
established the
basis for both fat and
soap chemistry.
Also important to the
advancement of soap
technology was the mid-1800s
invention by the Belgian
chemist, Ernest Solvay, of the
ammonia process, which also
used common table salt, or
sodium chloride, to make soda
ash. Solvay's process further
reduced the cost of obtaining
this alkali, and increased both
the quality and quantity
of the soda ash
available for
manufacturing
soap.
These scientific
discoveries, together with the development of
power to operate factories,
made soapmaking one of
America's fastest-growing
industries by 1850. At the
same time, its broad
availability changed soap
from a luxury item to an
everyday necessity. With
this widespread use came
the development of milder
soaps for bathing and soaps
for use in the washing
machines that were available
to consumers by the turn of
the century.
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