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The 20th century brought an explosion of new products. Manmade substitutes for commodities like rubber reduced dependence on distant sources of supply. Other manmade products such as plastics and nylon proved stronger, more enduring, and more versatile than their natural counterparts. Today, synthetic fabrics and materials are so widely used it is hard to imagine life without them.

Age of plastics dawns with Bakelite
Hoping to capitalize on shortages of naturally occurring shellac — used to insulate electrical cables in the early years of the 20th century — Belgian-born chemist-entrepreneur Leo Baekeland in 1907 created the world's first completely synthetic plastic. Baekeland mixed phenol and formaldehyde, subjected them to heat and pressure, and produced the sticky, amber-colored resin he named Bakelite.

Bakelite could be molded quickly into different shapes, an enormous advantage in mass production processes, and retained its shape even when heated or subjected to solvents. Soon Bakelite was being used for everything from jewelry to light bulb sockets. Its use diminished only when other, more brightly colored plastics were introduced.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History houses the six-foot-tall Bakelizer, the steam pressure vessel Baekeland used to commercialize his invention.

Nylon changes fabric of life
DuPont introduced nylon, the first synthetic fiber, in 1939 to compete with cotton, silk, wool, and rayon. The new product forever changed the textile industry and gave women's hosiery the name by which they are still known: nylons.

Wallace Carothers

The breakthrough was the product of polymer research conducted by Wallace Carothers, who shared Hermann Staudinger's view that polymers are chains of very large molecules connected by ordinary chemical bonds.

The DuPont researchers found that strong, elastic, filament-like threads could be pulled from molten polymers after they cooled. After considering more than 80 candidates, the company settled on nylon for practical reasons: it could be crafted from benzene, a raw material readily available from plentiful and affordable coal. Among its many advantages, nylon sheds dirt and soil, and springs back into shape better than natural fabrics.

Synthetic rubber vital to war effort
An army may run on its stomach, but it won't go far or fast without rubber. When the supply of natural rubber from southeast Asia was cut off after the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. government teamed up with rubber companies, the fledgling petrochemical industry, and academic research facilities to come up with a substitute. (Read more)

By 1945, the United States was producing nearly a million tons of synthetic rubber per year. Today, we use it in everything from shoes to soccer balls.

"Do it yourself" movement born in paint
Wartime shortages were the impetus for developing Kem-Tone®, the water-based paint that made "do it yourself" a household word across the United States.

The Sherwin-Williams Company developed Kem-Tone when the winds of World War II reduced the supply of petroleum, linseed oil, and other traditional paint ingredients. Company chemists were asked to create a durable paint that could be made with readily available substances, such as water. They looked to the ancient Egyptians for ideas and discovered that casein (a milk protein) mixed with varnish, water, and other ingredients produced a paint that covered in one coat and kept its color even with repeated washings.

Kem-Tone was an instant hit with consumers. It dried quickly and was easy to apply, especially when applied with another innovation: a roller. (Read more)

Irradiated products build wired world
Post-World War II efforts to find new applications for the by-products of atomic energy led to the tough, high-performance materials used to build the electronic infrastructure that is the backbone of today's wired world.

A 1950 government study on the by-products of nuclear reactors and the advent of reliable, affordable electron accelerators encouraged chemical engineer Paul Cook to believe that radiation could be used to create new materials for industrial use. He joined Richard Muchmore and James Meikle to found a new company, Raychem, and a new industry based on radiation chemistry.

When a precisely focused beam of radiation strikes a polymer, hydrogen gas forms and escapes. This leaves behind chemically reactive sites that create links along and across polymer chains. These changes toughen polymers so they resist damage, perform well at high temperatures, and develop "elastic memory" — return to their original dimensions when heated.

Raychem used the new technology to improve the performance of electronics components and to make wires, cables, and tubing more durable.

Magic of chemistry transforms gas into Hula Hoop
Merlin, the legendary magician who knew how to manipulate the elements, would have applauded J. Paul Hogan and Robert Banks, the chemists who in 1951 transformed components of natural gas into the plastic that made the Hula Hoop® possible

J. Paul Hogan

Robert Banks

The Phillips Petroleum Company charged Hogan and Banks with finding a way to transform natural gas components so they could be used in gasoline. Instead, they discovered polypropylene and developed a new catalytic process for making high-density polyethylene.

The first commercially successful fruit of Hogan and Banks' research was the Hula Hoop, a large ring of tubing still popular among the children of the baby boomers who made the toy a cultural phenomenon of the 1950s. Today, billions of pounds of the high-performance plastic are used each year in products ranging from milk jugs to automobile parts.

The Beckman pH Meter

Arnold Beckman, then an assistant professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, invented the pH meter that bears his name to enable the California citrus industry to measure acidity. Beckman’s invention revolutionized scientific instrumentation because it contained all the necessary components in one unit. The pH meter was portable, and it was an example of the early use of integrated electronic technology. Beckman went on to found Beckman Instruments to market the pH meter and other chemical instruments. After retiring from active control of Beckman Instruments, he devoted his energies to philanthropy, particularly encouraging research in molecular and genetic medicine. (Read more)

George Washington Carver: Chemist, Teacher, Symbol

Born a slave near the end of the Civil War, George Washington Carver gained international fame as an agricultural chemist. Carver developed hundreds of new products from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops. He also conducted experiments in crop rotation and the restoration of soil fertility. From his position on the faculty of Tuskegee Institute, Carver urged southern farmers to rotate cotton with soil-enhancing crops such as peanuts and soybeans. He reached a wide audience through the agricultural bulletins he published and through his fame as "The Peanut Man." (Read more).

The Columbia Dry Cell Battery

In 1896 the National Carbon Company (predecessor of Energizer) introduced the sealed, six-inch, 1.5 volt Columbia dry cell, the first battery marketed for consumer use. The Columbia, a maintenance-free, durable, no-spill, inexpensive electrochemical power source, immediately found use in the emerging telephone and automobile industries. The Columbia batter also played a critical role in the adaptation of electric current to household devices. The mass-production of batteries made possible the introduction of electric doorbells, burglar alarms, electric sewing machines and the flashlight.

Because the Columbia did not break as easily as predecessors and was economical to produce, it could satisfy many of these consumer needs. Moreover, the technology of the Columbia, a carbon-zinc battery using an acidic electrolyte, served as the basis for all dry cell batteries for the next sixty years, until the introduction of the alkaline battery by the Eveready Battery Company (now Energizer) in the late 1950s. (Read more).

Rumford Baking Powder

In the mid-19^th century, Eben Horsford devised a unique mixture of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and calcium acid phosphate, which he named "yeast powder" and later called baking powder. In the presence of water, the mixture releases carbon dioxide, which leavens biscuits, cookies, and quick breads. Later, to prevent a premature chemical reaction, Horsford introduced starch to keep the mixture dry. Horsford and his business partner, George Wilson, established the Rumford Chemical Works in Rhode Island to market baking powder. Rumford Baking Powder was marketed for decades using the formula first developed by Horsford in the 1850s and refined in the 1860s.

Eben Norton Horsford was born in upstate New York in 1818 and educated at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his formal education in chemistry in Germany, where he studied for two years with the noted chemist, Justus von Liebig. In 1847 he returned to the United States to assume the Rumford Professorship at Harvard, a chair endowed by Benjamin Thompson, a physicist who fled the American Revolution and who eventually became Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire. When Horsford and Wilson began their chemical plant, Horsford chose the name Rumford, after his Harvard chair. (Read more).

The Development of Tide^®

Tide, the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent, debuted in 1946, the culmination of a search to replace traditional soaps, which did not clean well in hard water, where they deposited a residue of scum, or curds. Before Tide came on the market, Procter & Gamble marketed Dreft^®, which represented a breakthrough because it cleaned clothes in hard water — a benefit for residents from the Midwest to the Rocky Mountains — without leaving curds. But Dreft did not clean heavily soiled clothes well. P&G chemists knew that the cleaning ability of synthetic detergents could be boosted by adding “builders,” compounds that penetrate clothes more deeply to remove stains. But the builders left clothes harsh and stiff because the chemicals, usually sodium phosphates, reacted with the water’s hardness to form insoluble deposits that could not be rinsed away.

After years of research, the correct formula finally was found, and P&G rushed the new product, Tide, to market. It was an instant success; its popularity was boosted by the simultaneous introduction of automatic washing machines which saved the consumer time and effort. By the early 1950s Tide captured more than 30 percent of the laundry market, and it has subsequently become the number one selling detergent every year. (Read more).