Rayon fiberis the earliestregenerated fiber, first patented in 1855 by the Swiss chemist Georges Audemars. It was also calledartificial silk. Sir Joseph Swann, an English chemist, was inspired by Thomas Edison's incandescent electric lamp to make a filament for electric light and tested the Audemars cellulose solution for lifting to freeze in a freezing bath. His fibers were used in Edison's discovery, and in 1885, his wife was in an exhibition of textiles crushed from his new fiber. Artificial silkwas also exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1889 by the French chemist Count Hilaire de Chardonnet, who is known as the father of the rayon industry Because he created the first plant for the commercial production of intricate net silk in Besancon, France.