When was polymers invented

A staggering number of plastic and chemical innovations emerged in the period surrounding World War II. Today plastics are renowned for their sustainability, strength and design flexibility, finding unique and innovative applications in sectors ranging from healthcare and medicine, consumer technology, automotive, packaging, aerospace, building and construction and everything in between. Supply Chain. This is Plastics. Get involved in grassroots: Activities you can undertake to make a difference.

Register for the Spring Food Packaging Summit, June in Baltimore, MD: Join the brightest minds in the food packaging industry as they tackle regulations, both nationally and globally. Hear our leadership speak at events: Many of our events offer you the opportunity to hear our leadership team speak. History of Plastics Share:. Polystyrene PS was created first as an alternative to die-cast zinc, but quickly became a replacement for rubber in the copolymer of polystyrene and butadiene: styrene-butadiene rubber SBR.

Nylon, which DuPont released for sale as synthetic silk hosiery in to much fanfare, was quickly rationed by the U. A Dow chemist created expanded polystyrene EPS by accident in and the sturdy lightweight plastic became a useful thermal insulator and shock-absorber. When you think of plastic, what springs to mind? Cheap toys from China? Or maybe a plastic bag? Of course you would. But how about a woolly jumper? Or cornflakes? Or an antique oak wardrobe? Believe it or not, from a chemist's perspective all these things are made of the same class of materials: Polymers.

And the distinction between which ones we happen to call "plastics" and which ones we don't is fairly arbitrary. Polymers are extremely long repetitive molecules which, in the case of plastics, are primarily made of carbon. As well as plastics, they also include the silicones - based on silicon rather than carbon - used in everything from breast implants to fire retardants.

The polymers' shape is what gives plastics their plasticity, allowing them to be moulded into any shape. The individual strands "can simply slide past each other" says Sella.

Humans have been using naturally derived plastics for far longer than you may imagine. For example, medieval craftsmen made lantern windows out of translucent slices of animal horn. Horn is made of keratin - a mixed carbon-nitrogen polymer - the same stuff that skin and hair, including wool, is made of.

A millennium and a half before Christ, the Olmecs in Mexico played with balls made of another natural polymer - rubber. It was not until the 18th Century that the first European, French explorer Charles-Marie de La Condamine, stumbled upon the rubber tree in the Amazon basin. And it was only in the s that the American Charles Goodyear and the British Thomas Hancock took out patents on either side of the Atlantic for "vulcanised" rubber - treated with sulphur to make it more durable.

Vulcanisation made possible the rubber tyre for the bicycle, and later the motor car hence the Goodyear tyre company. Thomas Hancock, meanwhile, collaborated with Charles Mackintosh to make water-resistant clothing. But the story of plastics goes back earlier even than the Olmecs, in fact as long as man has been using wood.

That's because about half of your average piece of wood is cellulose - a polymer that provides the tough walls of plant cells, and wood its stiffness and durability. It is the long strands of cellulose that are separated by the pulping industry, and that give paper its strength. It was also cellulose that provided the raw material for the next great breakthrough in modern plastics - the material "Parkesine", modestly named by the British inventor Alexander Parkes, who put it on display at the international exhibition in London.

Many early examples of Parkesine products - printers' moulds, cutlery handles, buttons, combs - can be found on display today at London's Science Museum. It was left to two Americans, the Hyatt brothers, to make a mint from the material - much to Parkes' chagrin. Toiletries, home appliances, toys, stationery, food packaging, the list is endless.

Throughout history, the human race has strived to develop materials with benefits not generally found in nature. When we started using natural materials with plastic-like properties such as gum or shellac. From there, the industry moved to modify natural materials such as collagen, rubber and nitrocellulose.

The First Synthetic Polymers One of the earliest examples of man made plastic was invented by Alexander Parkes in He named it Parkesine but we know it better as celluloid. The American love of billiards was causing a shortage of ivory, which was used for the balls and was leading to the needless hunting of elephants for their tusks. Hyatt discovered that it was a great replacement for ivory, tortoiseshell and other similar materials.

Plastic As We Know It The first synthetic plastics, mass-produced, as we would recognise it today was developed by chemist Leo Baekeland in He named it Bakelite.

As the United States was picking up the pace in providing electricity to homes and industry, it needed a synthetic insulator that was heat resistant, pliable and durable.