All Polymers

8/8/2019 All Polymers

1/10

People & Polymers Who's Who inPolymers Natural Plastics Timeline

Many discoveries are made accidentally, whilst others result from the ideas and work of many people, often over a long period of time. However, it is sometimes a spark of

genius, sometimes sheer good fortune and sometimes the dogged determination of oneperson who makes a success of the discovery.This is certainly true of plastics and this website gives a brief profile of many of thepeople who gave us these new materials.

Material Year Discovered by

NATURAL RUBBER 1839 GOODYEAR

VULCANITE 1843 HANCOCK

GUTTA-PERCHA 1843 MONTGOMERIE

SHELLAC 1856 CRITCHLOW BOIS DURCI 1856 LEPAGE

PARKESINE 1862 PARKES

XYLONITE 1869 SPILL

CELLULOID 1870 HYATT

CELLULOID PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM 1889 GOODWIN

VISCOSE 1892 CROSS, BEVAN & BEADLE

CELLULOSE ACETATE 1894 CROSS & BEVAN

CASEIN 1903 KUNTH

BAKELITE 1907 BAEKELAND

DAMARD LACQUER 1910 SWINBURNE

POLYVINYL ACETATE 1913 KLATTE

UREA FORMALDEHYDE 1918 JOHN

POLYACRYLATES 1927 ROHM & HAAS

BEETLE THIOUREA 1928 ROSSITER

POLYSTYRENE 1929 IG FARBEN NEOPRENE 1930 CAROTHERS

POLYESTERS & POLYAMIDES 1930 CAROTHERS

POLYMETHYL METHACRYLATE 1932 CRAWFORD - I C I

MELAMINE 1933 HENKEL


2/10

POLYVINYLCHLORIDE 1933 SEMON - B. F. GOODRICH

POLYESTER RESIN 1933 CARLTON ELLIS

POLYETHYLENE (LOW DENSITY) 1933 GIBSON & FAWCETT- ICI

POLYVINYLIDENE CHLORIDE 1933 WILEY - DOW NYLON 66 1935 HILL - DU PONT

NYLON 6 1938 SCHLACK

PTFE 1938 PLUNKETT- DU PONT

POLYURETHANE 1939 BAYER - IG FARBEN

EPOXIDE RESIN 1939 CASTAN

POLYACRYLONITRILE 1940 DU PONT

POLY(ETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE) 1941 WHINFIELD AND DICKSON

SILICONES 1943 KIPPING

POLYETHYLENE (HIGH DENSITY) 1953 ZIEGLER

POLYPROPYLENE 1954 NATTA

POLYCARBONATE 1958 FOX

POLYFORMALDEHYDE 1959 McDONALD

ETHYLENE VINYL ACETATE (EVA) 1960 DU PONT

POLYIMIDE 1962 DU PONT

POLYPHENYLENE OXIDE (PPO) 1964 GENERAL ELECTRIC

POLYSULPHONE 1965 UNION CARBIDE


3/10

NATURAL RUBBER

Today rubber is an essential part of our lives and its uses are legion, ranging from the simple office eraser (rubber) to the foundations for buildings (as well as l adies), gaskets, seals, inflatable objects of every description and the ubiquitous tyre.

If you want to make something that is airtight, waterproof and/or stretches or bounces, then make it of rubber! The industry as we know ittoday is something over 150 years old although it was about 100 years before that that the first scientific paper was written on this natural

material.

The discovery of natural rubber by the w estern world dates back to the late 15th /early 16thcenturies in the West Indies and Central America although we now know that i t had been used bythe natives of those regions from at least 1600 BC. Indeed the name of one of the oldest tribes the OLMECS means the rubber people.

On this site you can discover how natural rubber was associated from the dawn of history withblood and sacrifice, how the Mesoamerican ball game was often not a game but a fight to thedeath and, through the Mayan Book of Life, how important the rubber ball was to the religiousbeliefs of the Mayans. Given that the Mesoamerican ball game is known to be over 3,500 yearsold it is probably the first of all BOUNCING BALL games played today.

Columbus' ship - The Santa Maria

The lives of the people involved with transforming natural rubber from a curiosity to the material it is today are described and we can see howmany millions of native lives were lost in satisfying the demand for rubber as the industrialised world m oved into the 20th century.

The first synthetic rubbers (or elastomers) were commercially synthesised less than a century ago and their history is one of academicresearch galvanized by two world wars. Today there are several general purpose synthetics and a wide range of specialized materialswhich, in total, constitute about 55% of the total elastomers market. The remainder is the natural material derived mainly from the Heveabraziliensis tree which was transplanted to countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam as the rubber plantationindustry developed to meet the demand which wi ld rubber could not satisfy.

Finally we can look at some of the simple chemistry of rubbers, how and why they degrade and what can be done to slow down the process.Browse the time line, with its 500 rubber-related dates and events from 60,000,000BC to the end of the 20th century and use the links tocheck out more details or just click on any links on this page.

Ch arlesGoodyear

(1800 - 1860)

Charles Goodyear was born on 29 December 1800in New Haven, Connecticut, USA - the first of 6children born to Amasa and Cynthia Goodyear.

Amasa was a farmer, inventor and manufacturer of farm implements and famous for buttons, beingcredited as the first manufacturer of pearl buttons in

America.When 17, Charles was placed with a large firm of importers and manufacturers agents in

Philadelphia, Penn. In 1921 he returned to NewHaven to become a partner in one of his father'sbusinesses.He married in 1824 and two years later set up aretail hardware store in Philadelphia. His healthfailed along with his business and he wasimprisoned, the first of many times, for debt.

Although he later set up blacksmithing he did not


4/10

inventedvulcanisationof rubber

clear his debts and he turned to inventing, takingout various patents which he sold or assigned to hismany creditors.The first rubber manufactory had been set up atRoxbury, Mass. in 1833 for making waterproof textiles and other items - but these were notsatisfactory; the rubber melted in summer andcracked in winter. Charles Goodyear turned hisattention to 'curing' this problem, working at hishome. He was impoversihed but managed to findenough financial backing for this work, and wasgranted a patent in 1837 for an acid gas process -winning medals for his displays of rubber goods.In 1838 Goodyear purchased the former EagleIndia Rubber Company which had come into thehands of Nathaniel Hayward . He assisted Haywardin taking out a patent (which was assigned toGoodyear) for a combination of rubber with sulphur.Further patents were taken out by Goodyear but hewas still in financial trouble and was againimprisoned for debt.The important vulcanisation patent was granted inJune 1844, one month after Hancock (who wasaware of Goodyear's work with sulphur) had takenout a similar patent in the UK. In 1858 the patentwas extended for a further 7 years.Goodyear was still in debt when he died on 1 July1860 of 'gout'. His final illnes, however, had many of the symptoms of lead poisoning, and his death hasbeen attributed to the extensive use of white lead inhis many vulcanisation experiments.


5/10

V ulcanite

The vulcanisation of natural rubber with sulphur was discovered by Charles Goodyear inthe USA about 1839 and was patented by Hancock in England in May 1843 andGoodyear in USA in June. Patents for hard rubber (vulcanite) were granted to Hancockin England in 1843 and to Nelson Goodyear (brother of Charles) in USA in 1851.Mouldings in vulcanite (hard rubber) were exhibited by both Hancock and Goodyear atthe Great Exhibition of 1851.The material is most commonly black in colour and has been used to make combs,buttons, vesta cases, jewellery, fountain pens, pipe stems (both plain and decorative),musical instruments, etc.; it was also widely used as an electrical insulator and for chemically resistant linings. A reddish colour was used for denture plates untilsuperseded by celluloid and acrylic. A reddish material rippled with black was popular about 1930 for fountain pen and pencil barrels.It was originally based on natural rubber but since the 1930s has been based wholly or partly on various synthetic rubbers

T h omas Thomas Hancock was born in 1786. He beganexperimenting with natural rubber in 1819, and inthe following year rented a factory in Goswell Road,


6/10

H ancock

developedVulcanite

London working raw rubber with machinery of hisown invention - machines which may be regardedas the prototype of the rubber mill and mixer. In1826 he made a working agreement with CharlesMackintosh and Company for the manufacture of waterproof garments in Manchester. In 1843Hancock took out a patent for the vulcanisation of rubber using suplhur, one month ahead of Goodyear in the USA. However, in his personalnarrative of 1856, Hancock does not credit himself with discovering the reaction of sulphur with rubber.He tells that, in 1842 a friend, William Brockendonshowed him some American samples of rubber which had been treated with sulphur to improve itsproperties. He also mentions that this friendinvented the word vulcanisation from Vulcan of mythology, representing the use of sulphur andheat. Hancock's major contribution was that hedeveloped the necessary machinery for processingrubber. Goodyear who discovered sulphur vulcanisation had little interest in machinedevelopment, being more concerned with the usesof rubber. Hard rubber, also called vulcanite or ebonite may be regarded as the first semi-syntheticplastics material. It was popular for dental plates,Vesta match cases, pens and imitation jet or mourning jewellery - mainly in the latter half of the19th and early 20th centuries although it was in useuntil the 1940s.


7/10

Gutta Perc h a

Gutta percha (GP), also known as balata, is a natural thermoplastic and is of fundamental importance in the history of the plastics industry.

This new material was soon adopted by a vigorous innovative society and by the time of the Great Exhibition in 1851 a host of different applications had been found coveringmany aspects of Victorian life. The major use of GP was for the insulation of submarinecables which revolutionised communications throughout the world. By the end of thenineteenth century over a quarter of a million nautical miles of telegraph cable was inuse. This application was to continue for a total of 100 years until polythene took itsplace. A revolution of a different kind resulted from the introduction of GP for golf balls in1848. Until then feathers encased in leather was used which was very expensive andquickly became unplayable in wet weather. Balls made of solid GP had no suchdisadvantages and their cheapness and reliable performance was a major influence inthe vast expansion of the game in subsequent years. Another innovation, which musthave been greeted with more than usual enthusiasm at a time before aspirin, was thedevelopment, also in 1848, of a dental stopping compound which is the forerunner of alltemporary filling materials in use today. These are but three of the hundreds of applications which were developed in the first decade. Although GP has beensuperseded by modern synthetic materials it still has its uses. The raw material is nowsupplied from America (as balata) where it continues to be used for golf ball covers.Belting incorporating balata is used for power transmission, GP tissue is sold for bindingflower stems and even dentists continue to use it for root filling. The excellent mouldingproperties of GP are still exploited for making replicas of medals and coins and,coloured red, for seals on official documents in Scotland. The importance of GP is nowmuch diminished but its position as the first plastics material remains secure.

W illiam In 1843 Dr Montgomerie was Assistant Surgeon tothe Presidency at Singapore when that outpost wasfirst added to the empire of George IV. He noticed


8/10

Montgomerie

saw usefulness of gutta perc h a

that gum from trees of the genus Palaquium wasused by native woodmen to make handles for parangs. He obtained samples and realising itsusefulness for making surgical appliances sentsamples to the Medical Board in Calcutta. He alsosent samples to The Royal Society of Arts and byintroducing this Malayan gum to the western worldfor the manufacture of surgical appliances he hadplaced in the hands of British industry the first reallyuseful plastics material - gutta percha. A sample of gutta percha came into the hands of ThomasHancock, he showed it to his brother Charles, aprofessional artist also interested in commercialprojects, who was experimenting with bottlestoppers. In 1845 Charles joined forces with aDublin chemist, Henry Bewley, who had invented aspecial clamped stopper for soda water bottles.This was the beginning of the Gutta PerchaCompany, later to become the TelegraphConstruction and Maintenance Company. Guttapercha had particular electrical and mechanicalproperties which made it suitable for submarinetelegraph cables - the first cable being laid betweenEngland and France in 1850. No better materialwas found for this purpose until Polythene wasdiscovered in the 1930s.


9/10

S h ellac

Shellac has been used for centuries in lacquer form as a protective and decorative finish forwood and metals (not to be confused with Chinese lacquerwork that is based on resin fromRhus verniciflua trees). The lac insect is a plant parasite producing an exudate as aprotective barrier against predators. Traditionally scraped off twigs with the eggs, larvaeand pupae and insects, the shellac is cleaned and filtered to produce a hard, brittle

thermoplastic material. This is used as the basis for sealing wax.In the nineteenth century many mixtures and compositions were based on shellac, the mostsuccessful being the American ones of Peck, Halvorson, and Critchlow. Wood powder wasthe filler mixed into the molten shellac to produce a composition or mixture capable of beingmoulded by heat and pressure. They made Union Cases to hold early daguerreotypes andambrotypes. Over 1000 different Union Case designs are known, predominantly black incolour, although red brown and other dark shade examples exist. The moulded-in designsvary from the machine-made strictly geometric, through stylised floral to the pictorial,frequently based on established popular paintings. Sizes vary from 1/16th plate to the fullplate 190 x 237 mm. Shellac slowly thermosets above 100 degrees C, and most shellacUnion cases are largely no longer thermoplastic as the reaction continues even at roomtemperature.As photographic technology improved, so the requirement for folding cases diminished andconventional decorative 'picture' frames were produced. Many Union cases have themanufacturers' name and patent details printed on paper and glued to the inside, behindthe image, but very few have moulded in trade marks.As the technology shifted to mineral filled shellac, trade names became more frequent, e.g.Smith's Patent American Composition of solid back frames. Dressing table sets with brushand mirror backs in black shellac compositions (Diatite, etc.) are not uncommon,occasionally with patent numbers or dates moulded in. In England, Manton patented hiscomposition and used it on black brooches of various designs.Mineral filled shellac was the material used to make 78rpm records.


10/10

A lfredC ritc h low

(1813-1881)

inventedSh ellac moulding

compound

Alfred P. Critchlow was born in 1813 in Nottingham,England and manufactured horn buttons inBirmingham. He emigrated to the US and continuedhis trade in Haydenville, Mass., before moving toFlorence, Mass. where he began experimenting inthe early 1850s with shellac and gutta perchamoulding compounds. He claimed to have inventeda shellac-based moulding material (he called itFlorence Compound) which he, and others, used tomanufacture Union Cases. These highly decoratedcases, used to protect daguerreotype photographicimages, were among the first mass-producedplastics mouldings. In an 1856 patent relating to themanufacture of Union Cases, Critchlow merelyreferred to the compound as being composed of various materials, well known to those whosebusiness it is to manufacture such cases. Critchlowentered into partnership with Samuel Hill and IsaacParsons in 1853 but in 1857, when the popularity of Union Cases was approaching its peak, he sold hisinterest in the business and its name was changedto Littlefield, Parsons & Company. However, by themid 1860s, ambrotypes had taken over fromdaguerreotypes and the need for the Union Casewas gone. In 1866, Littlefield, Parsons & Co.changed their name to the Florence ManufacturingCo. and produced a number of beautiful shellachand mirror and brush sets.

Documents

All Polymers