Johann Urban was born on 7 June 1863 in Wuchern (now Vuhred) near Marburg (Maribor) in Lower Styria, Austrian Empire.

[2] He studied mechanical and electrical engineering in Graz, and expected to work as a teacher at a state vocational school.

[4] The Swiss chemist Matthias Eduard Schweizer (1818–60) had found in 1857 that cotton could be dissolved in a solution of copper salts and ammonia and then regenerated.

[5] In 1890 the French chemist Louis Henri Despeissis invented the cuprammonium process for spinning fibers from cotton dissolved in Schweizer's reagent.

[4] The success of the nitrocellulose fiber developed by Hilaire de Chardonnet encouraged Fremery and Urban to investigate making artificial silk, which they named "Silkimit" and patented in 1897.

[6] In Oberbruch in 1898 they established the first factory in Germany to economically produce artificial fiber, using a patent for manufacture of rayon made from cellulose in a copper-ammonia solution.