The Molding of The World
Once the butt of jokes, plastics have infiltrated every corner of modern life
Just consider plastic by a few of its other names: Teflon, nylon, rayon, polar fleece, Plexiglas, Lucite, Lycra, Formica, Velcro, vinyl, Gore-Tex, saran, Styrofoam, celluloid, cellophane, and polycarbonate. It is a key component of today's computers, cellphones, and jets. It encapsulates our medicines, ensures sterile surgeries, and provides our artificial organs and limbs. It is found in our alarm clocks, shower curtains, contact lenses, and clothing; in our TVs, cookware, and sofas. Even the Statue of Liberty is coated in a polymer that protects it from corrosion.
Replacing nature. The fact that not a single plastic item was found aboard the Titanic, sunk in 1912, gives some idea of how fast the breakthroughs have happened and how massive their repercussions have been. With each new material concocted, stumbled upon, or lucked into, entire industries have been born or transformed. Since the dawn of industrialization, a serious hunt was on for natural resource substitutes: "ivory" that wouldn't require slaughtering elephants, "wood" that wouldn't rot, "metal" that wouldn't corrode. Bizarre odors and the sounds of small explosions came from labs around the world as brave souls mixed recipes including sulfur, gunpowder, acids, petroleum wastes, alcohol, even cream cheese and chicken soup.
The first huge breakthrough was the product of a phenol and formaldehyde mixture, pressurized and heated to over 200 degrees Celsius. Introduced to the United States in 1909 as Bakelite by backyard chemist "Doc" Leo Baekeland from Yonkers, N. Y., the world's first totally synthetic plastic was a durable material that could be molded into everything from ashtrays to airplane propellers. Bakelite became the new "ivory" of billiard balls, formed the classic black dial telephone, and replaced metal agitators in washing machines. By the 1930s more than 90,000 tons of Bakelite were produced yearly.
But it was World War II that placed plastics at the center of necessity. Dire shortages of natural resources made synthetics crucial. A rubber substitute called vinyl supplied Allied troops with waterproof tents and boots. An ultra-light insulation called polyethylene gave the British the ability to install radar on planes and ships--and a critical advantage over the otherwise superior German Air Force and Navy. And a cousin of Plexiglas, a liquid polymer added to Russian fuel, kept tanks and vehicles running in sub-zero temperatures when Nazi engines broke down.
In peacetime, the military synthetics quickly found new uses. The nylon that had been used for parachutes set off arguably the world's largest fashion craze by becoming more valuable than silk as ladies' leggings. Teflon that lined military fuel tanks made space exploration possible, and spawned dozens of new plastics that would outfit astronauts and their vessels. By 1979, plastic production surpassed that of steel, ushering in what Stephen Fenichell, author of Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century, calls the Plastic Age, a title as indicative of human progress as the Iron Age or the Bronze Age. Long-lasting superplastics are fast replacing metal in buildings, machines, and vehicles. Virtually all of the data of the Information Age are stored on plastic, from computer components to DVDs.
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