"As battlefield injuries grew, the cotton supply shrunk. The company Kimberly-Clark (future owners of the Kleenex brand) developed a substitute made from wood pulp and dubbed it Cellucotton. The new material was pitched to the U.S. surgeon general as a substitute for a cotton surgical dressing for war wounds and as a gas mask filter. Two employees developed the material after visiting European pulp and paper mills in 1914 and seeing that manufacturers overseas were using processed pulp to make something that could stand in for cotton."
Source: Time Magazine
