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Learn about
Plastics |
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Brief history of plastics
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We
would like to briefly illuminate on the history of plastics and their
introduction into the industrial and consumer society. As we mentioned, the
definition of the word plastic is to form or model something. In this light you
can understand that wood, clay, glass and vegetable fibres were the plastics of
early man who shaped and baked these materials to his own needs. With the coming
of the Industrial Revolution came man's exploitation of natural resources and
scientists in western civilization began to experiment with these resources and
organic chemicals.
The first important date in our history books shows us that a compound called
urea was discovered and isolated in the urine of mammals and other higher forms
of animal life. This event took place in the year 1773, but it was not until
1828 that urea was synthetically produced and the foundation for
phenol-formaldehyde plastics was laid. In 1843 an acrylic acid preparation was
reported and in 1901 Dr. Otto Rohm published the results of his researches with
acrylic resinoids.
By 1909 the first patent for phenol- formaldehyde plastics
was secured by Dr. Leo Baekeland. he found that phenol and formaldehyde when
combined formed a resinous substance, a phenolic plastic which he called
"Bakelite". It was a plastic -- it could be softened with heat and
then moulded into shape and set into final form by continued heating under
pressure while in the mould. Baekeland's discovery triggered the creative
imagination of organic chemists and research began the world over more intensely
than ever before.
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