This looks promising and it will be worth while to determine in how far this mass which I will call D is able to make moulded materials either alone or in conjunctions with other solid materials as for instance asbestos, casein, zinc oxid sic , starch, different inorganic powders and lamp black and thus make a substitute for celluloid and for hard rubber.
Substance D was "insoluble in all solvents, does not soften. I call it Bakalite sic and it is obtained by heating A or B or C in closed vessels. The key to reaching the final product "C" from "A" or "B" were machines that subjected earlier stages to heat and pressure.
Baekeland called these machines "Bakelizers. Baekeland made the first public announcement of his invention on February 8, , in a lecture before the New York section of the American Chemical Society.
Previous reactions had resulted in slow processes and brittle products, he said; then he continued " Baekeland's first patent in the field had been granted in ; in all, he took out more than patents related to the manufacture and applications of Bakelite.
He started semi-commercial production in his laboratory and, in , when daily output had reached liters, most of it for electrical insulators , he formed a U. Bakelite can be molded, and in this regard was better than celluloid and also less expensive to make. Moreover, it could be molded very quickly, an enormous advantage in mass production processes where many identical units were produced one after the other.
Bakelite is a thermosetting resin—that is, once molded, it retains its shape even if heated or subjected to various solvents. Bakelite was also particularly suitable for the emerging electrical and automobile industries because of its extraordinarily high resistance not only to electricity, but to heat and chemical action as well. It was soon used for all non-conducting parts of radios and other electrical devices, such as bases and sockets for light bulbs and electron tubes, supports for any type of electrical components, automobile distributor caps and other insulators.
Along with its electrical uses, molded Bakelite found a place in almost every area of modern life. From novelty jewelry and iron handles to telephones and washing-machines impellers, Bakelite was seen everywhere and was a constant presence in the technological infrastructure.
The Bakelite Corporation adopted as its logo the mathematical symbol for infinity and the slogan, "The Material of a Thousand Uses," but they recognized no boundaries for their material. The Achilles heel was color. The pure Bakelite resin was lovely amber, and it could take other colors as well.
Unfortunately, it was quite brittle and had to be strengthened by "filling" with other substances, usually cellulose in the form of sawdust. After filling, all colors came out opaque at best and often dull and muddy. Ultimately, Bakelite was replaced by other plastics that shared its desirable qualities, but could also take bright colors. Today, only one or two firms now make phenolic resins, but Baekeland's creation set the mold for the modern plastics industry. Today, synthetic plastics are everywhere.
They are as familiar to us as wood or metal, and are easily taken for granted. Almost anyone can name a dozen familiar products made in part or in whole with plastic: toys, computers, clothing, sports equipment, carpet, appliances, building materials, signs, office supplies, packaging, phones and fashion accessories. But some are less visible: Medical equipment—from hip-joint replacements and pacemakers to contact lenses and surgical tools—are made using wholly or partly synthetic materials.
Baekeland's new material opened the door to the Age of Plastics and seeded the growth of a worldwide industry that today employs more than 60 million people. As the future unfolds, plastics and other synthetic polymers will play increasingly versatile roles in medicine, electronics, aerospace and advanced structural composites. New products will be manufactured and molded all over the world—in complex processes that began with Leo Baekeland, an idea, and the Bakelizer.
Like many of the people who have made important contributions to American life, Leo Hendrik Baekeland was an immigrant. He was born in Belgium, in the Flemish city of Ghent, on November 14, His father, a cobbler, opposed his son's wish for an education and apprenticed him at age 13 to a shoemaker. Fortunately, Baekeland's mother, a domestic servant, insisted that he also be allowed to attend a government high school.
It was there that Baekeland's lifelong commitment to chemistry began. Soon young Leo had also enrolled in night classes in chemistry, mechanics and photography, paying his way by working as a pharmacist's assistant. In , he used a city scholarship to enter the University of Ghent—the same university at which, only 15 years earlier, August Kekule had described the benzene ring, a discovery that became the cornerstone of modern organic chemistry.
Baekeland had a powerful mentor at Ghent, Kekule's former student, Theodore Swarts. Swarts guided Baekeland through his student years and beyond. By , when the university appointed Baekeland assistant professor of chemistry, Swarts saw it as the start of an illustrious academic career.
But Baekeland found himself less interested in pure chemistry than in its potential applications, and the two men often quarreled. Whether intentionally or not, Baekeland settled the argument for good a year later when, at 26, he married Swarts' daughter, Celine, and, two days afterward they left for the United States. The newlyweds' trip to America was financed with a traveling fellowship he had received for academic study abroad. But Baekeland never returned to pure chemistry, or to his roots in Belgium.
By , he was a citizen of a new and exciting country, and a visible part of a fledgling chemical industry. Chandler led him to a position at a local photographic supply company. For the first time human manufacturing was not constrained by the limits of nature. Nature only supplied so much wood, metal, stone, bone, tusk, and horn. But now humans could create new materials.
This development helped not only people but also the environment. Advertisements praised celluloid as the savior of the elephant and the tortoise. Plastics could protect the natural world from the destructive forces of human need.
The creation of new materials also helped free people from the social and economic constraints imposed by the scarcity of natural resources. Inexpensive celluloid made material wealth more widespread and obtainable. And the plastics revolution was only getting started. In Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic, meaning it contained no molecules found in nature.
Baekeland had been searching for a synthetic substitute for shellac, a natural electrical insulator, to meet the needs of the rapidly electrifying United States.
Bakelite was not only a good insulator; it was also durable, heat resistant, and, unlike celluloid, ideally suited for mechanical mass production. While Hyatt and Baekeland had been searching for materials with specific properties, the new research programs sought new plastics for their own sake and worried about finding uses for them later. World War II necessitated a great expansion of the plastics industry in the United States, as industrial might proved as important to victory as military success.
The need to preserve scarce natural resources made the production of synthetic alternatives a priority. Plastics provided those substitutes. Nylon, invented by Wallace Carothers in as a synthetic silk, was used during the war for parachutes, ropes, body armor, helmet liners, and more. Plexiglas provided an alternative to glass for aircraft windows.
The surge in plastic production continued after the war ended. After experiencing the Great Depression and then World War II, Americans were ready to spend again, and much of what they bought was made of plastic. In the postwar years there was a shift in American perceptions as plastics were no longer seen as unambiguously positive. Bakelite was the first commercial plastic that was completely synthetic , hot-mouldable and, once cooled, produced a hard material that was resistant to heat, electricity and solvents.
Its application as an electrical insulator was immediate, but its uses soon began to proliferate. Particularly relevant was the use of bakelite for specific components whose requirements matched perfectly with the properties of the new material, such as the distributor cap of automobiles, the base of radio tubes or the insulating plates on which parts were mounted, explains Jeffrey Meikle, historian of culture and design at the University of Texas USA and author of American Plastic: A Cultural History Rutgers University Press, Of course, the uses of bakelite were not limited to technological components: buttons, poker chips and pieces of games and toys, firearms, kitchen utensils, electric guitars and even jewellery were made from the material; the new plastic went from filling the gap of a specific demand to boosting industrial development in general.
Spurred on by the brilliant success of his product, Baekeland chose an ambitious emblem for his company: the mathematical symbol of infinity.
However, bakelite had its obvious limitations: it was resistant, but fragile. The hardness and lack of flexibility that made it suitable for certain uses was a drawback for others. That is why petrochemical companies began investigating new plastics derived from the by-products of fossil fuel processing. More versatile compounds such as polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride PVC began to emerge, replacing bakelite in many of its applications, including some of those for which it was originally invented.
Click Enter. Login Profile. Es En. Economy Humanities Science Technology. Multimedia OpenMind books Authors. Scientific Insights. Featured author. Robert E. Brookings Institution, Washington D.
0コメント