Page 173 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1474 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

depends on the object.The rubber duck is actually made dles, and ashtrays, but which became more important as
from plastic (PVC, or polyvinyl chloride), yet carbon- the first commercially successful semisynthetic fiber.
fiber tennis rackets are usually not regarded as plastic.We
all know what plastics are, but it is a culturally deter- Bakelite and Style
mined term, not a technical one. Celluloid had its uses, but it was expensive, difficult to
work with, and flammable (it is related chemically to gun
The Origin of Plastics cotton). The real breakthrough for plastics had to await
For many centuries, objects have been shaped out of nat- the development of the first fully synthetic plastic, Bake-
ural materials that could be considered similar to mod- lite. The Belgian-American chemist and inventor Leo
ern plastics, including clay (pottery), glass, and wood Baekeland invented Bakelite in 1907 while trying to
(which has a similar structure to synthetic reinforced make a synthetic lacquer from the reaction between two
composites).Wax, horn, and shellac (made from the lac organic chemicals, phenol and formaldehyde. He used a
insect) were even closer to our current concept of plas- two-stage process: the chemicals reacted to form an
tics. Horn is perhaps the closest of these materials to intermediate which was then heated in a pressurized
modern plastics. By the eighteenth century, horn was mold to make the final product. Bakelite appeared at the
being molded, using pressure and heat, to produce a vari- right moment, when the rapidly growing electrical indus-
ety of objects, especially beakers, medallions, snuffboxes try was looking for a good robust material for switches
and jewelry. Restricting the use of the term plastics to and other components that did not conduct electricity.
synthetic (or at least semisynthetic) materials, the history Although it could be used for domestic goods (billiard
of modern plastics began with the accidental discovery of balls were an early example), its dark color and lack of
nitrocellulose (cellulose dinitrate) by the Swiss chemist translucency was a major drawback. These problems
Christian Schöbein in 1845. The British chemist and were overcome by the amino plastics (made by the reac-
inventor Alexander Parkes experimented with nitrocellu- tion between formaldehyde and urea or melamine),
lose in the 1850s, and by 1860 he had made molded which were colorless and translucent.They could be col-
objects from this material, which he exhibited at the ored to produce very attractive molded household
International Exhibition in London two years later. He objects including clocks, ashtrays, and crockery.The first
patented the idea of adding camphor to soften the stiff amino plastics were developed by the British Cyanide
nitrocellulose in 1864. Variants of the resulting sub- Company (later renamed British Industrial Plastics) in
stance, called Parkesine, were developed in London in 1924, and the American Cyanamid Company intro-
the 1870s as xylonite by Parkes’s former works manager duced the melamine plastics in 1939. By the 1930s, plas-
Daniel Spill and an American, Levi Merriam, and in tics manufacturers were encouraging industrial designers,
Newark, New Jersey, as the better-known celluloid by two such as Norman Bel Geddes, to create new styles which
brothers, John Wesley and Isaiah Smith Hyatt. By the showed off their products to the best advantage. In this
1890s, celluloid had become an important material, period Bakelite and melamine plastics were particularly
used to make billiard balls (and other items formerly associated with Art Deco and the new technology of
made from ivory), combs, washable collars and shirt- radio sets.
fronts, photographic film, and ping-pong balls (invented
in 1901 and one of few remaining uses of celluloid). In Wartime Expansion
1892, two British chemists, Charles Cross and Edward In the 1930s other plastics were being developed which
John Bevan, introduced a new cellulose-based material, were very different from Bakelite, being both light and
viscose rayon, which could be molded into combs, han- easily shaped.They had existed as laboratory curiosities