The first carbon fibers

The synthetic carbon industry had its official beginning in 1886 with the creation of the National Carbon Company. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, the company would eventually merge with Union Carbide in 1917 to form Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., which changed its name to Union Carbide Corp. in 1957.

Electricity was mostly a lab curiosity until the late 1800s, when carbon arc lamps began lighting the streets of major U.S. cities. The lamps were composed of two carbon rods connected to a current source and separated by a short distance. A blazing hot path of charged particles — the “arc” — formed between the two rods, giving off an intense light. National Carbon got its start by producing carbon electrodes for streetlamps in downtown Cleveland.

In 1879, Thomas Edison invented the first incandescent light bulb, which uses electricity to heat a thin strip of material, called a filament, until it glows. He may also have created the first commercial carbon fiber. To make his early filaments, Edison formed cotton threads or bamboo slivers — into the proper size and shape — and then baked them at high temperatures. Cotton and bamboo consist mostly of cellulose, a natural linear polymer made of repeating units of glucose. When heated, the filament was “carbonized,” becoming a true carbon copy of the starting material — an all-carbon fiber with the same exact shape. Tungsten wire soon displaced these carbon filaments, but they were still used on U.S. Navy ships as late as 1960 because they withstood ship vibrations better than tungsten.

Near the end of World War II, Union Carbide began investigating a replacement for tungsten wire in vacuum tubes by carbonizing rayon — another cellulose-based polymer, like cotton, that became popular in clothing. The end of the war brought an end to the government’s funding for this project, but carbon fibers were still raising interest in the commercial sector. Barnebey-Cheney Company, in 1957, briefly manufactured carbon fiber mats and tows (rope-like threads without the twists) from rayon and cotton. These were used as high temperature insulation and filters for corrosive compounds. A year later, Union Carbide developed a carbonized rayon cloth and submitted it to the U.S. Air Force as a replacement for fiberglass in rocket nozzle exit cones and re-entry heat shields.

While finding a certain degree of success in their respective niches, all of these early carbon fiber materials had poor mechanical properties, making them unsuitable for structural use. It took a chance discovery to set the age of high performance carbon fibers in motion.

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