Alexander Parkes was a metallurgist and inventor from Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. He created Parkesine

Parkesine

Parkesine is the trademark for the first man-made plastic. It was patented by Alexander Parkes in 1856. In 1866 Parkes formed the Parkesine Company to mass produce the material. The company, however, failed due to poor product quality as Parkes tried to reduce costs...

, the first man-made plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

.
The son of a brass

Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...

 lock

Lock (device)

A lock is a mechanical or electronic fastening device that is released by a physical object or secret information , or combination of more than one of these....

 manufacturer, Parkes was apprenticed to Messenger and Sons, brass

Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties.In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin...

 founders

Foundry

A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...

 of Birmingham, before going to work for George and Henry Elkington

George Elkington

George Richards Elkington was a manufacturer from Birmingham, England. He patented the first commercial electroplating process.Elkington was born in Birmingham, the son of a spectacle manufacturer...

, who patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

ed the electroplating

Electroplating

Electroplating is a plating process in which metal ions in a solution are moved by an electric field to coat an electrode. The process uses electrical current to reduce cations of a desired material from a solution and coat a conductive object with a thin layer of the material, such as a metal...

 process. Parkes was put in charge of the casting department, and his attention soon began to focus on electroplating. Parkes took out his first patent

Patent

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 (No.