Marking 75 years of SPE, with an eye on the future

The Society of Plastics Engineers is 75 years old. That's a landmark: SPE has adapted to meet the changing needs of professionals.

How has SPE changed? I wrote a package of stories for SPE's 50th anniversary, in 1992, the pre-Google era. It was heavy on the history, and the fact that plastics were relatively new meant that I could talk directly to the people who were there at the beginning. That excited me.

I interviewed Charles W. Kleiderer, who was a plastic development and production engineer on the team that developed the proximity fuze, which fit on the end of a rocket, missile or bomb. A major progression of technology, the fuze detonated when the weapon closed in on its target.

I talked to John Slater, who in the early 1930s sold Tenite resin, a novel material, for Tennessee Eastman Co. Tenite was a something brand new, a thermoplastic — cellulose acetate — in an age of thermosets.

George S. Hendrie Sr. began his pioneering extrusion career dipping toilet seats and car parts into a nitrocellulose solution in the early 1930s. He and a partner, Jack Gould, bought a company that specialized in the process, called Detroit Macoid Corp.

These industry giants are no longer alive. And the next generation of plastics leaders was still in diapers … plastic disposable ones, of course.

We hope you enjoy this SPE 75th Anniversary issue of Plastics News. This time we decided to look ahead and not dwell on the past. The issue is not filled with stories about the early days of SPE and how the leaders shared scarce information about new materials and technologies to help with the war effort.

Instead, we are looking at issues the plastics industry faces today, like globalization, sustainability and the scarcity of trained workers. And we're also looking at how the potential changes from things like 3D printing and new materials.

Most of the stories are told in the words of SPE members themselves, whom we asked to look into the future and predict what the plastics industry — and SPE — will look like 25, 50 and 75 years from now.

We are encouraged by the results.

Let's look at the future. Our overreliance on (addiction to?) the tiny screens we hold in our hand raises two alarms. First: Will we all hurt our posture by staring down? Second: I think we are no longer capable of the level of soaring communication of World War II, preserved on the printed page.

Consider this, from a letter written in the earliest days of SPE:

"Together we meet on common ground, with similar problems, each willing to assist the other, and in turn receive assistance. This spirit is the essence of cooperative action. An SPE meeting conducted in this spirit renders an important and vital service to the engineer, the community and the nation."

Fred O. Conley, who founded what was then called the Society of Plastics Sales Engineers, wrote that in 1942, just months after Pearl Harbor, and the United States had entered World War II.

Seemingly overnight, America became "the Arsenal of Democracy."

Email can't do that. But wait, email is boring. Now we tweet instead. Our love for abbreviated communication has dumbed us down. Social media experts say: "Google yourself." I'm still waiting for people to realize that, hey, Twitter is stupid.

I think we have lost the grace and power of words, and frankly, as someone who writes for a living, it's depressing. Modern journalism asks, "How can we use video, blogs and tweets to reach the readers of the future?" The question should be, "Will people read in the future?"

I'm just afraid of a future that is dark, burdened by ignorance and poor posture.

Bregar is a Plastics News senior reporter. Follow him on Twitter @Machinerybeat25. But if you really want to impress him, write a letter instead.