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Until very recently, plastic was the wunderkind of the western world. Sleek symbol of modernity and human progress, the invention of plastic has, arguably, touched more lives than any other technological breakthrough. It replaced old and familiar things. The elegant dark heaviness of desks and tables gave way to lighter, pastel colored furnishings, changing the look and feel of home and office.
Plastic is perfect for this modern age. It is light, strong, easily molded and durable. It is a throwaway substance, part of the planned obsolescence of modern life. As with synthetic fabrics, many of which are made from plastic, it’s a case of technology improving on nature, a symbol of a less burdensome, more colorful lifestyle.
Ok, I’ll pause now for brickbats from the Environmentalists. Truth is, in this crowded age, some plastics are a bit too cheap and disposable, and much too durable. We want our distant descendants to remember us by the Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire State Building, not by the five billion everlasting Styrofoam cups that are tossed away by Americans every year, or the thousands of tons of plastic bottles, bags, and wrappers, hurled from speeding cars to float forever across the face of the earth. I’m an optimist, though. Scientists are already designing plastics that will simulate nature and return their substance to the earth.
Recycling is also gaining momentum, and plastic can be used over and over, remolded to form new food and drink containers, waterproof bags, carpets, industrial paints, flower pots, fences, benches, industrial pallets, and other products. In 1994, 565 million pounds of plastic bottles were recycled, from about 2.5 billion pounds produced. The figure for recycling could probably be bumped up to a billion pounds. And, as with most other procedures involving plastic, recycling is fairly easy.
Indeed, the word plastic comes from the Greek word ‘plastikos’, meaning moldable. Since plastic is easy to manufacture, strong, and durable, and is a good insulator to boot, it has made inroads against such traditional materials as natural fibers, wood, metal, and rubber. In many cases, the more traditional products have moved upmarket, while plastic has cheerfully occupied many humdrum, unglamorous niches. Cheap toys, cheap fabrics, cheap furniture, casing, decorations, all are within the purview of this versatile product. Plastic has also taken on some sterner stuff, such as plumbing conduits, gears, bearings, and automobile shells.
Plastic had an inauspicious birth. An Englishman, Alexander Parkes, looking for collodion in his medicine cabinet to staunch a wound, discovered that it had gelled into a tough rubbery substance. He was an enterprising man who saw the possibilities, if this substance could be molded. Unfortunately, molding required heat, and heating always made the substance explode. Licking his wounds, Parkes worked on, and finally produced a suitable mixture of collodion, camphor, and ethanol. Parkesine, the first synthetic plastic, was launched in 1865, and the Xylonite company was formed a year later.
In the USA, the Hyatt brothers were working on the same lines, and invented a similar material, which they called celluloid. The year was 1869. In 1877, the Hyatt Company and Xylonite merged into the British Xylonite Company, which exists today as BXL Plastics Ltd.
The man who influenced the plastics industry more than any other, however, was a Belgian, Leo Beakland, who immigrated to the USA in 1889 to better use his talents. In 1907 he invented Bakelite which would dominate plastics for the next 50 years. By 1930, gramophone records, billiard balls (originally made from elephant tusks!), telephones, camera cases, radios and chairs were all made of the new super plastic.
However, Bakelite really took off after the patent expired in 1927. As the Great Depression took hold, Bakelite came to be seen as a ray of hope for several embattled industries. Cheap and colorful, it acquired a reputation as the new modern forward-looking product, poised to kick-start consumer industries such as furniture, radios, cheap ornaments, etc. It became known as ‘the material of a thousand uses.’ Cheapness and ease of manufacture made plastic equipment especially worthwhile during the Depression. A plastic radio could be made to look like highly polished wood – for a selling price of $10, compared with hundreds of dollars for a radio with a real wooden cabinet.
The 1930s also saw the introduction of streamlining, and the maturation of the Art Deco movement. The smooth, flowing industrial designs that were beginning to appear were perfect for the shiny, malleable Bakelite. The angular machine age was giving way to the streamlined plastic era.
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