Last year, scientists reported the development of a simple and effective two-stage industrial process, purportedly capable of transforming bulk natural wood directly into a high-performance structural material, with a more than tenfold increase in strength, toughness and ballistic resistance, and with greater dimensional stability; as strong as steel, but six times lighter (comparable in weight and density to aluminium). First, natural wood is boiled in an aqueous mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphite (in much the same manner as the creation of wood pulp for paper), before being heat-compressed; resulting in the total collapse of cell walls, and the complete densification of the natural wood, with highly aligned cellulose nanofibres.
This relatively simple, low-tech and inexpensive two-stage process has been shown to work on practically all varieties of wood; and the finished 'super wood' isn't just strong, tough, and light (cited as having a specific strength higher than that of most structural metals and alloys), but is also impressively dense, resistant to compression (with armor plating cited as one of the most promising applications of the material, with the researchers firing bullets at their new super wood and reporting that they got lodged in the material rather than penetrating through), hard and scratch-resistant, and even inherently protected against moisture. And it can also be bent and moulded at the beginning stage of the process, into whichever shapes may be required.
After hearing about this material, along with its miraculous properties, and the relative simplicity of the production methods required to produce it, it got me wondering. Hence, this question. What if, in an ATL, someone had developed this industrial process far earlier on; either during the First Industrial Revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution, or some time between the two? How massive an impact do you feel that the discovery and patenting of this industrial process, and the production of 'super wood' with these properties (which, at the time, would've been far superior to those of the highest-grade contemporary steel alloys in every way), would have had upon the world? How radically different might this 'Woodpunk' ATL look, compared to OTL? And if I were to explore this by starting a full-blown TL based upon this premise, where do you think would make for either A)the most realistic, or B) the most interesting place for this process to be discovered and patented?