Bakelite was the first plastic derived from fossil fuels. Leo Baekeland, a Belgian immigrant in New York, discovered the first completely synthetic plastic by applying heat and pressure to a mixture of phenol (from coal tar) and formaldehyde (a wood alcohol distillate). A few years later, in 1888, George Eastman (of Kodak fame) gave celluloid its greatest boost when he turned it into the first flexible film for photographs and movies. Hyatt went on to make combs, pins, shirt collars and cuffs from celluloid that was dyed to look like ivory, ebony, mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. Celluloid was the first ‘thermoplastic’: a substance which when moulded under heat and pressure retains its shape. That made the new material both malleable and tough. It was a good idea except that the balls exploded on contact. In upstate New York John Wesley Hyatt attempted to surround a wooden ball with collodion, the same mixture that Parkes had used. The search for imitation ivory billiard balls sparked the next big plastic discovery – celluloid. Were too expensive, his financial backers got cold feet and Parkes’ enterprise went into receivership a few years later. Unfortunately, the chemicals used to make the collodion The result was a jelly-like lotion which he hoped to cast into thick slabs. Parkes started with ‘collodion’, a mixture of ether, alcohol and natural cellulose derived from cotton. The first plastic-like substance débuted at the International Exhibition in London in 1869 when Alexander Parkes announced his discovery – ‘Parkesine’ – a plastic mass which could be moulded by machine into an infinite variety of products. In a few short decades, by the late 1970s, the global production of plastic had outstripped steel. With the birth of the petrochemical industry after World War Two the plastic age exploded. The first faltering steps that launched the plastic era started about 150 years ago.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |