History of Plastics

PRE -1700’s South American Indians used natural rubber (Isoprene) to create items such as raincoats, shoes, balls, and water containers. They used rubber tree sap and a primitive dip molding process to create most of these items. http://www.rubberfutures.com/Rubber_Futures.jpg

1770’s Small blocks of natural rubber are sold to erase marks made by lead pencils. The motion used to erase these marks leads to the naming of the material – rubber. http://z.about.com/d/chemistry/1/0/L/P/eraser1.jpg

1833 Charles Goodyear develops the vulcanization process which improved on the properties of rubber materials by adding sulphur and heat to the natural rubber. This allowed for increased hardness, chemical resistance and wear resistance in the materials by crosslinking, creating chemical bridges between the molecules of the base material.

1845 Christian Friedrich Schönbein develops cellulose nitrate, guncotton, by wiping up a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acid with his wife’s cotton apron. The apron burst into flames when hung above a hot stove to dry. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19915/19915-h/images/image_25.jpg

1862 Alexander Parks displayed Parkesine at the International Exhibition in London. Parkesine is a Cellulosic material made from Nitric Acid and Cellulose.

1868 John W. Hyatt submitted a material he developed as a contest entry. The contest was to find a replacement material for Ivory, due to its high cost. The material, Celluloid, was created by mixing Camphor with pyroxylin, a low nitrogen nitrocellulose material. Mr. Hyatt began the production of plastic materials in the United States.

1897 Casein formaldehyde is discovered by Adolf Spitteler.

1909 Leo Baekeland patented Bakelite, a phenol-formaldehyde resin (phenolic). He began the mass production of items that would replace those made of other materials like metal and wood.

1909 (continued) Bakelite This not only produced items that were lighter, more chemically and electrically resistant, and in many cases stronger than the original item, but also allowed for more experimentation in the design due to the ease of fabrication of the newly developed material. Phenolic was the first fully synthetic resin.

Plasticized Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) developed by Waldo Semon 1927 Cellulose Acetate was developed as a safer alternative to the explosive cellulose nitrate. The most common use of Cellulose Acetate today is in cigarette filters Plasticized Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) developed by Waldo Semon

1930’s Wallace Carothers at DuPont developed Polychloroprene (Neoprene), Polyester, and Polyamide 6. He also coined the terms addition polymerization and condensation polymerization.

1930’s (continued) Polyvinyl Acetate, Polystyrene, Polymethylmethacrylate, and Polyurethane developed.

1933 Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson polymerized Polyethylene

1954 Polypropylene is produced with Zeigler-Natta metallocene catalyst

1957 Polycarbonate discovered at General Electric by Daniel Fox while trying to develop a wire coating material.

1964 Stephanie Kwolek discovered Liquid Crystal Polymers (LCPs) which led to the development of Aramid fibers (Kevlar)

1970-2000 Development of many high temperature engineering polymers; Polyetherketone, Polyetherimide, Polyethersulphone, etc.

2000 → Development and commercialization of biopolymers (Polylactic acid and starch based). Plastics and chemicals used in their production come under attack by many environmental groups.

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