The modern plastics industry began in the 1860s with a competition in America to find a better billiard ball. A prize of $10,000 was put up for anyone who could find a cheap replacement for ivory balls. The winner was John Wesley Hyatt, an American inventor, who made a ball from a substance he called Celluloid.
Other uses for Celluloid were quickly found – among them spectacle frames, knife handles, windscreens for early automobiles and photographic film. Without Celluloid the film industry could never have started.
Celluloid is not completely man-made because its raw material is cellulose, which is found in plants. Nevertheless, Celluloid gave Leo Baekeland, an American industrial chemist, the idea to create the first completely synthetic material. He achieved success in 1907 by mixing phenol (carbolic acid) and the gas formaldehyde – producing a plastic which he called Bakelite.
Many other plastics were invented in the wake of Baekeland’s momentous discovery. But even he would be amazed at the growth of the plastics industry, which now has an annual turnover of more than $100 billion in the United States alone.
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