A brief history of plastic

Today, plastics are everywhere. All of this plastic originated from one small object— that isn’t even made from plastic.

 for hundreds of years, billiard balls were made from ivory from elephant tusks. But when excessive hunting caused elephant populations to say no within the 19th century, billiard ball makers began to seem for alternatives, offering huge rewards.

 So in 1863, an American named Wesley Hyatt took up the challenge. Over the subsequent five years, he invented a replacement material called celluloid made up of cellulose, a compound found in wood and straw.

 Hyatt soon discovered celluloid couldn't solve the ball problem–– the fabric wasn’t heavy enough and didn’t bounce quite right. But it might be tinted and patterned to mimic costlier materials like coral, tortoiseshell, amber, and mother-of-pearl. 

He had created what became referred to as the primary plastic. The word ‘plastic’ can describe any material made from polymers, which are just the massive molecules consisting of an equivalent repeating subunit. 

This includes all human-made plastics, also as many of the materials found in living things. But generally, when people ask about plastics, they’re pertaining to synthetic materials.

 The unifying feature of those is that they begin out soft and malleable and may be molded into a specific shape.

 Despite taking the prize because the first official plastic, celluloid was highly flammable, which made production risky. 

So inventors began to search for alternatives.

 In 1907 a chemist combined phenol— a waste of coal tar— and formaldehyde, creating a hardy new polymer called bakelite. 

Bakelite was much less flammable than celluloid and therefore the raw materials wont to make it were more readily available. 

Bakelite was only the start. In the 1920s, researchers first commercially developed polystyrene, a spongy plastic utilized in insulation. 

Soon after came PVC, or vinyl, which was flexible yet hardy.

 Acrylics created transparent, shatter-proof panels that mimicked glass. And within the 1930s nylon took center stage— a polymer designed to mimic silk, but with repeatedly its strength. 

Starting in 1933, polyethylene became one of the foremost versatile plastics, still used today to form everything from grocery bags to shampoo bottles, to bulletproof vests. New manufacturing technologies accompanied this explosion of materials. 

The invention of a way called injection-molding made it possible to insert melted plastic into molds of any shape, where they might rapidly harden.

 This created possibilities for products in new varieties and shapes— and how to inexpensively and rapidly produce plastics at scale.

 Scientists hoped this economical new material would make items that when had been unaffordable accessible to more people. 

Instead, plastics were pushed into service in war Two. 

During the war, plastic production within us quadrupled. Soldiers wore new plastic helmet liners and water-resistant vinyl raincoats. Pilots sat in cockpits made from plexiglass, a shatterproof plastic, and relied on parachutes made from resilient nylon. 

Afterward, plastic manufacturing companies that had sprung up during wartime turned their attention to consumer products.

 Plastics began to exchange other materials like wood, glass, and fabric in furniture, clothing, shoes, televisions, and radios. 

Versatile plastics opened possibilities for packaging— mainly designed to stay food and other products fresh for extended.

 Suddenly, there have been plastic garbage bags, stretchy wrapping, squeezable plastic bottles, takeaway cartons, and plastic containers for fruit, vegetables, and meat. within a couple of decades, this multifaceted material ushered in what became referred to as the “plastics century.”

 While the plastics century brought convenience and cost-effectiveness, it also created staggering environmental problems. Many plastics are made from non-renewable resources. And plastic packaging was designed to be single-use, but some plastics take centuries to decompose, creating an enormous build-up of waste. This century we’ll need to concentrate our innovations on addressing those problems— by reducing plastic use, developing biodegradable plastics, and finding new ways to recycle existing plastic.