Summary:
At the 1862 Great International Expo in London, Alexander Parkes unveiled the first synthetic plastic, which the public christened "Parkesine." Parkesine was derived from cellulose, a natural chemical found in the cell walls of plants. The main selling point of Parkesine was that it has the same basic properties of rubber, but could be made at a lower cost.
Throughout our daily lives, there is a substance used countless times, so many times in fact, that we may not even realize its importance. So what is this material, you may be asking yourself? Cement? Glass? Wood? Actually, it is a substance that was originally known as Parkesine, and later as Celluloid. Today, we have a much simpler name for this amazing substance that has literally shaped life as we know it: plastic. From our tables to our kitchens; from our stoves to the front lines of combat; from the operating room to the clothes on our backs, plastic has become an institution in the American life.
At the 1862 Great International Expo in London, Alexander Parkes unveiled the first synthetic plastic, which the public christened "Parkesine." Parkesine was derived from cellulose, a natural chemical found in the cell walls of plants. The main selling point of Parkesine was that it has the same basic properties of rubber, but could be made at a lower cost. Parkes discovered a substance that could be carved into virtually any shape and was transparent, a factor that rubber did not have to offer. Within months of its debut, Parkesine lost its original luster, as the cost of raw materials to produce the substance became too high and investors pulled the plug. From its early beginnings in Parkesine, humans have been intrigued by the amazing characteristics of plastic.
Twenty-four years after Parkes took London by storm, an American, John Wesley Hyatt, came up with a solution to stop the killings of thousands of elephants by ivory-greedy poachers that wished only to use the tusks for billiard balls. Spilling a bottle of collodion in his lab, Hyatt accidentally created a solution he called Celluloid, named for its source of derivation. Upon testing his material, he found that the brittle Celluloid shattered upon impact with other billiard balls. To solve this problem, Hyatt added camphor- a natural additive that made Celluloid the first thermoplastic, a substance molded under heat and pressure, even after the heat and pressure have been removed. Because of its immense flexibility, Celluloid was used as the first photographic film for both motion pictures and still shots. A world without movie theaters at every mall and family photo albums is almost impossible to imagine, and without plastic, neither of these would ever have existed.
Using the more updated techniques that were available in the early 1900's, Leo Baekeland, a chemist from New York discovered a substance that, unlike the previous substances, would hold its shape, once heated and cooled. Bakelite, a liquid resin, would not "burn, boil, melt, or dissolve in any commonly available acid or solvent."
Many other chemists attempted to discover life-changing chemicals, however none of them were noticeably successful until Dr. Jacques Edwin Brandenberger, a Swiss textile engineer, saw a customer in a restaurant spill a bottle of wine on a tablecloth and noticed the waiter threw the cloth away. He thought it was a horrible waste for people to continue throwing away perfectly useable cloths. He sought out a way to protect them, a thin, transparent layer that could cover the entire surface, a substance known as cellophane. Cellophane was the first fully flexible, waterproof covering.
Every day, hundreds of millions of people use plastics. Doctors in operating rooms are able to replace non-working hearts with plastic hearts that are modeled after true hearts, complete with valves, arteries, and even veins. In the early hours of every weekday, parents prepare lunches for their children, often using Ziploc bags and cellophane, placing the lunch in a sturdy plastic lunch box. Recent research in the field of plastic has made it available for recycled plastic (bottles, containers, bags, etc.) to be made into clothes. The very shirt you are wearing may in fact contain plastic fibers. On many stoves in the world, sit pans coated with a layer of Teflon, a substance that creates a literally stick-proof pan. On the front lines of combat, soldiers wear a cloth that contains 60% plastic fibers, making the cloth less susceptible to the harsh conditions. In the barren plains of Africa, more than 200,000 dying children have been saved by injections from syringes made of mostly plastic. Most food-packaging companies depend on the strength, durability, and low cost of plastic to protect the perishable contents. Each day, millions of us use plastic in every faction of our lives. Since 1976, plastic has been the most used material in the world.
When you actually think about it, plastic has changed the way we live. It has shown up in every area of our daily life. Without movie theaters, military advances, medical advances, better-preserved food, and non-stick cooking, our lives would be more difficult, less convenient, and less efficient. Plastic has had an amazing effect on our world, and now that it has been implemented as an important part of our manufactured goods, it is increasingly difficult to imagine a world where no plastic exists. Spoiled food, many more deaths due to medical downfalls, sick and dying soldiers, and burnt on food. Is that a world that you are interested in living in? Me either... Thanks to the amazing material that is plastic, we will not have to worry about those less than perfect scenarios. Thanks to the astounding innovation of plastic, our lives are more convenient, more efficient, and much safer.
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