SECTIONS

• About Leo Baekeland & Bakelite

• How the industry has changed

• Towns built around plastics

• Consumer attitudes

• Plastics as a replacement material

Time line

• National Plastics Center

• The next 100 years

• Plastics in pop culture

• Photo gallery

• Viewpoint

• Perspective

A video interview with Palmer Humphrey

Vinyl advances from aimless to essential
 
The early history of PVC was one of a polymer seeking usefulness. Chemical researchers in the 1800s inadvertently discovered PVC by leaving vessels of vinyl chloride in sunlight, which polymerized the monomer into rigid solids. Scientists examined the material but could think of no use for it.

PE: The resin that helped win World War II
 
British chemists Reginald Gibson and Eric William Fawcett stumbled on polyethylene in 1933, by a stroke of luck. They went public with the discovery, but German scientists doubted their conclusions — a tactical mistake Britain would later exploit in World War II.

Britain also has legacy steeped in plastics
 
The significant role of Britain in the discovery and development of the first plastics is often overlooked -- overshadowed, as it is, by the dominant figure of Belgian Leo Baekeland, creator and commercial champion of Bakelite in the United States.

Researchers claim four Nobel Prizes
 
Since the first Nobel Prizes were handed out in 1901, four — in chemistry — have been given to polymer researchers.