The variety of plastic objects at risk is dizzying: early radios, avant-garde sculptures, celluloid animation sills from Disney films, the first artificial heart.
By the middle of the century, American entrepreneurs discovered that dipping nitrocellulose in wax turned it into a hard, enduring substance, and patented it as celluloid.
So in the late 1800s and early 1900s, celluloid accessories were everywhere -- buttons, jewelry, eyeglass frames, toys, and little hair combs that ladies would wear.
But this story begins about 20 years before George Lucas dreamed up Darth Vader before he changed the art of animation before he pioneered the transition of film from celluloid to digital.