Plastics are one of the most revolutionary and important inventions to come out of the nineteenth century. Plastics can be tough and rigid, soft and flexible, transparent or opaque. Plastic began to be mass manufactured just over a century ago, which makes it a very modern material. Prior to the inception of plastics, other similar materials such as shell and horn were often used. By 1725, London had become the major European centre for the moulding of horn. By the nineteenth century the common use of ivory and tortoise shell was no longer viable because the natural resources needed to poach the animal materials were being over-farmed and were becoming scarce. There was a great need for an artificial material to take their place, and that is where plastic came into play.
The first plastic was introduced at the Great International Exhibition in London in 1862. This is where British chemist Alexander Parkes introduced the world to his invention, Parkesine. The product resembled the look of ivory and horn and seemed like a great new alternative. The reasons for the failure of the product vary, depending on the source. There are some who say that it wasn’t a viable option thanks to inflated production costs, and others who attest that Parkes used inferior materials, thus producing inferior products that weren’t well received by consumers. Regardless of the reasoning, Parkesine was a commercial failure, but soon another innovation in plastics would emerge to take its place.
Inventor John Wesley Hyatt, Jr. and his older brother Isaiah, both moved to the bustling and busy city of Chicago early in their adult lives. John worked as a printer’s apprentice and began inventing at a young age, while Isaiah was a newspaper editor. The Hyatt brothers filed for their very first patent on 19 February 1861 under Patent 31,461. The invention was an ‘Improved Knife-Sharpener’. The Hyatt brothers seemed to work well together and would continue to do so in the future, leading up to their most important discovery. The two would file another patent the next year, on 17 June 1862, for an ‘improvement in knife or scissors sharpeners’ (Patent 35,652).
In 1863, Phelan & Collender, the largest billiard supply company in the United States, were running a contest, seeking a synthetic replacement material to the ivory billiard balls that had long been the industry standard. The material was beginning to show signs of scarcity, due to the over-farming of elephant tusks. The hefty bounty of $10,000 was offered to anyone who could bring the company a new synthetic. John Wesley Hyatt, Jr. was one of the people that put his hat in the race, and to great success. Hyatt kept working in the print shop to pay the bills, but in his spare time at night he would work feverishly on the new invention.
In 1865 Hyatt was successful in creating a compound that consisted of a wood fibre core covered with a shellac and ivory dust. It is unclear whether he won the contest or was awarded any of the prize money from Phelan & Collender. On 10 October 1865, John Hyatt was granted his first solo patent for ‘Billiard-balls’ that detailed his new method for creation (Patent 50,359). He would soon form the Hyatt Billiard Ball Company with his friend Peter Kinnear. Hyatt needed to keep experimenting and developing new incarnations of his product because, while it was a step in the right direction, it still lacked the density and characteristics of ivory in many ways. It’s a good thing he still needed his day job, because it was one fateful day working in the print shop that Hyatt would discover the lead he needed to change history.
It was a spilled bottle of collodion that sparked Hyatt’s imagination. He went to clean up the spill, no doubt with annoyance that he would have a sticky mess on his hands, since collodion was a syrupy mixture that was used for coating photography in those days. Printers would use the substance, marketed then as ‘new-skin’ to coat their hands for protection while they were working. Instead of a mess he was encountered by a small amount of dried material that seemed to resemble the thickness and consistency of ivory. Collodion was, after all, primarily made of an alcohol and nitrocellulose mixture. Hyatt had exactly what he was looking for; he just needed a way to produce it effectively as a fully developed material. The experimentation began full-time, with Hyatt working with both liquid and solid collodion.
Years later, when Hyatt finally combined collodion with camphor and applied a heat to it, he discovered a mouldable, semi-synthetic thermoplastic. The Hyatt brothers wasted no time in looking after their interests and quickly filed for a patent. Patent 91,341 was granted on 15 June 1869 for an ‘Improved Method Of Making Solid Collodion’. The patent explanation read:
Our invention consists of a new and improved method of manufacturing solid collodion and its compounds; its essential feature being the employment of a very small quantity of ether or other appropriate solvent, and dissolving pyroxyline therewith, under a heavy pressure, so that a comparatively hard and solid product is obtained, with great economy of solvents and saving of time.
The brothers learned, with a consultation from a chemist, that they had to be very careful to not apply too much heat to their compound, because it was highly flammable. They were also advised that dental-plate blanks and dentures might be a good marketplace for their invention. Rubber had long been used to make dentures, but the costs of rubber were rapidly increasing and that fact that their collodion concoction was clear in its original state made it perfect for adding dyes and pigments to that could match the various colours needed. There were further alterations needed to their method and, on 12 July 1870, Patent 105,338 for the ‘Improvement in Treating and Molding Pyroxyline’ was granted; this final version of the Hyatt brothers’ plastic was dubbed ‘Celluloid’ by Isaiah. The brothers then established the Albany Dental Plate Company and the Celluloid dental blanks were born.
Throughout the 1870s the various applications for Celluloid began to become clear to the Hyatt brothers. They continued to improve on their manufacturing techniques and found that the clear plastic could be used to imitate a number of popular high-end materials, from amber and ivory, to coral and jet. The brothers began to manufacture a variety of products and Celluloid would come to be used for everything from vanity items to piano keys, cuffs and even glasses frames. Celluloid was a revolutionary product, but it wasn’t without distinct disadvantages. The reality was that Celluloid was highly flammable and subject to premature decomposition. The plastic staple was eventually replaced by a new and exciting material dubbed Bakelite.
It was shortly after the turn of the twentieth century and a new product was about to be introduced to the marketplace by Belgian-American Leo Henricus Arthur Baekeland. Leo Baekeland was a chemist, born on 14 November 1863, in Ghent, Belgium. He was the son of humble parents; his mother was a housemaid and his father, a shoe mender. Baekeland was able to utilise his voracious mind and intellect to elevate himself from his meagre beginnings in Ghent. He attended the Ghent Municipal Technical School, where he graduated with honours. This achievement provided him with a scholarship to the University of Ghent in 1880, where he studied chemistry and earned a PhD by the age of 21. In 1887 Baekeland produced and patented his first invention: a process for developing photographic plates in water. He also met his future wife, Celine Swarts, while working as the associate professor of chemistry at Ghent; the couple married on 8 August 1889 and would go on to have three children: George, Nina and Jenny.
On their honeymoon, Leo and Celine took a trip to America. It wasn’t just a leisure trip for the scholarly duo however; they also took the opportunity to visit a number of universities. It was a trip to Columbia University in New York City that would change Leo’s fate – and the face of the plastics industry forever. It was there that he was recruited by Richard Anthony of E. & H. T. Anthony & Co., a photography company, and Professor Charles F. Chandler. Impressed with Leo’s résumé to date, Anthony promptly offered him a job and tempted him and his new bride to move to America, an opportunity that they weren’t about to pass up. Baekeland worked for E. & H. T. Anthony & Co. for two years, before he ventured off on his own as an independent consulting chemist. This move did not prove to be a gainful one for Baekeland and he soon turned his focus back to his inventions. Leo would go on to invent a good many items, registering over 100 patents in his lifetime. It was his boyhood interest in photography that would lead to one of his more famous inventions, and it was during this time that he produced one of his most famous products: Velox.