History of technology |
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This is a timeline of the development of plastics, comprising key discoveries and developments in the production of plastics.
Year | Event | Reference |
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1600 BCE | Mesoamericans used natural rubber for balls, and figurines. | [1] |
1000 BCE | First written evidence of Shellac. | |
Middle Ages | Europeans used treated cow horns as translucent material for windows. Japanese and Chinese use ox horns for the same purpose, as well as for shades of oil lamps. | |
Year | Event | Reference |
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1839 | Eduard Simon, a German apothecary, discovers polystyrene | [2] |
1844 | Thomas Hancock patents the vulcanization of rubber in Britain immediately followed by Charles Goodyear in United States. | [3] |
1856 | Parkesine, the first member of the Celluloid class of compounds and considered the first man-made plastic, is patented by Alexander Parkes. | [4] |
1869 | John Wesley Hyatt discovers a method to simplify the production of celluloid, making industrial production possible. | |
1872 | PVC was accidentally synthesized in 1872 by German chemist Eugen Baumann. | [5] |
1889 | Eastman Kodak successfully filed a patent for the celluloid film | [6] |
1890s | Galalith, a plastic derived from casein developed by Wilhelm Krische and Adolph Spitteler. | [7] |
1890s | Auguste Trillat discovered the means to insolubilize casein by immersion in formaldehyde, producing material marketed as galalith. | [7] |
1894 | Shellac phonograph records are developed and soon become an industry standard. | |
1898 | Polyethylene was first synthesized by the German chemist Hans von Pechmann while investigating diazomethane. | [8] |
Year | Event | Reference |
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1907 | Bakelite, the first fully synthetic thermoset, was reported by Leo Baekeland using phenol and formaldehyde. | |
1912 | After over 10 years research, Jacques E. Brandenberger develops a method for producing cellophane and secures a patent. | [9] |
1926 | Waldo Semon and the B.F. Goodrich Company developed a method to plasticize PVC by blending it with various additives. | |
1930 | Neoprene produced for the first time at DuPont | [6] |
1930s | Polystyrene first produced by BASF | [1] |
1931 | RCA Victor introduced their vinyl-based Victrolac compound for records. Vinyl records have twice the groove density of shellac records with good sound quality. | |
1933 | The first industrially practical polyethylene synthesis discovered by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson at the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) works in Northwich, England. | [10] |
1935 | Nylon is invented and patented by DuPont | [6] |
1938 | Nylon is first used for bristles in toothbrushes. It features at the 1939 worlds fair and is famously used in stockings in 1940 | |
1938 | Polytetrafluoroethylene (commonly known as teflon), discovered by Roy Plunkett at DuPont. | |
1941 | Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is discovered at the Calico Printers' Association in Britain. Expanded polystyrene first produced [6] | |
1950 | DuPont begin the manufacture of polyester. | |
1951 | J. Paul Hogan and Robert L. Banks from Phillips polymerized propylene for the first time to produce polypropylene | |
1953 | Polycarbonate independently developed by Hermann Schnell at Bayer and Daniel Fox at General Electric | |
1954 | Polypropylene was discovered by Giulio Natta with production starting in 1957 | [1] |
1954 | Expanded polystyrene, used for building insulation, packaging, and cup, was invented by Dow Chemical. | [1] |
1957 | Italian firm Montecatini begin large-scale commercial production of isotactic polypropylene. | |
1960s | High-density polyethylene bottles introduced and soon replace glass bottles in most applications | [11] |
1965 | Kevlar developed at DuPont by Stephanie Kwolek | |
1980s | Polyester film stock replaces cellulose acetate for photographic film and computer tapes. | |
1988 | First polymer bank notes issued in Australia | |
Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German electrical engineer, inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology and built the first semiconductor. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Guglielmo Marconi "for their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy", was a founder of Telefunken, one of the pioneering communications and television companies, and has been both called the "father of television", "great grandfather of every semiconductor ever manufactured" and the co-father of the radio telegraphy, together with Marconi.
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium, thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper, or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium.
Polyethylene or polythene (abbreviated PE; IUPAC name polyethene or poly(methylene)) is the most commonly produced plastic. It is a polymer, primarily used for packaging (plastic bags, plastic films, geomembranes and containers including bottles, etc.). As of 2017, over 100 million tonnes of polyethylene resins are being produced annually, accounting for 34% of the total plastics market.
Chloroform, or trichloromethane, is an organochloride with the formula CHCl3 and a common solvent. It is a very volatile, colorless, strong-smelling, dense liquid produced on a large scale as a precursor to refrigerants and PTFE. Chloroform is a trihalomethane that serves as a powerful general anesthetic, euphoriant, anxiolytic, and sedative when inhaled or ingested, for this reason, Chloroform was used as an inhalational anesthetic between the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. It is miscible with many solvents but it is only very slightly soluble in water.
Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common present-day uses are for manufacturing table tennis balls, musical instruments, combs, office equipment, fountain pen bodies, and guitar picks.
Pyrrole is a heterocyclic, aromatic, organic compound, a five-membered ring with the formula C4H4NH. It is a colorless volatile liquid that darkens readily upon exposure to air. Substituted derivatives are also called pyrroles, e.g., N-methylpyrrole, C4H4NCH3. Porphobilinogen, a trisubstituted pyrrole, is the biosynthetic precursor to many natural products such as heme.
TRIZ combines an organized, systematic method of problem-solving with analysis and forecasting techniques derived from the study of patterns of invention in global patent literature. The development and improvement of products and technologies in accordance with TRIZ are guided by the laws of technical systems evolution. Its development, by Soviet inventor and science-fiction author Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues, began in 1946. In English, TRIZ is typically rendered as the theory of inventive problem solving.
Elisha Gray was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. Some recent authors have argued that Gray should be considered the true inventor of the telephone because Alexander Graham Bell allegedly stole the idea of the liquid transmitter from him. Although Gray had been using liquid transmitters in his telephone experiments for more than two years previously, Bell's telephone patent was upheld in numerous court decisions.
Johannes Stark was a German physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields". This phenomenon is known as the Stark effect.
Marcel Grossmann was a Swiss mathematician and a friend and classmate of Albert Einstein. Grossmann was a member of an old Swiss family from Zürich. His father managed a textile factory. He became a Professor of Mathematics at the Federal Polytechnic School in Zürich, today the ETH Zurich, specializing in descriptive geometry.
Alexander Parkes was a metallurgist and inventor from Birmingham, England. He created Parkesine, the first man-made plastic.
The Reimer–Tiemann reaction is a chemical reaction used for the ortho-formylation of phenols. with the simplest example being the conversion of phenol to salicylaldehyde. The reaction was first reported by Karl Reimer and Ferdinand Tiemann.
Peter Henlein, a locksmith and clockmaker of Nuremberg, Germany, is often considered the inventor of the watch. He was one of the first craftsmen to make small ornamental portable clocks which were often worn as pendants or attached to clothing, and which are regarded as the first watches. Many sources also erroneously credit him as the inventor of the mainspring.
Phenyl salicylate, or salol, is the organic compound with the formula C6H5O2C6H4OH. It is a white solid. It is occasionally used in sunscreens and as an antiseptic.
The Doebner reaction is the chemical reaction of an aniline with an aldehyde and pyruvic acid to form quinoline-4-carboxylic acids.
In organic chemistry, ethenone is the formal name for ketene, an organic compound with formula C2H2O or H2C=C=O. It is the simplest member of the ketene class. It is an important reagent for acetylations.
In chemistry, the haloform reaction is a chemical reaction in which a haloform is produced by the exhaustive halogenation of an acetyl group, in the presence of a base. The reaction can be used to transform acetyl groups into carboxyl groups or to produce chloroform, bromoform, or iodoform. Note that fluoroform can't be prepared in this way.
Rudolf Christian Böttger (28 April 1806 – 29 April 1881) was a German inorganic chemist. He conducted most of his research at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He is credited with discovery of nitrocellulose in 1846, independently to Schönbein, and with the synthesis of the first organocopper compound copper(I) acetylide Cu2C2 in 1859.
Willy Marckwald was a German chemist.