History of Plastics:

History of Plastics:

In the nineteenth century chemically modified natural polymer based plastics were discovered. Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization of rubber (1839) and Alexander Parkes discovered cellulose-based plastics in the 1860s. The first plastic based on a synthetic polymer was called Bakelite and was created by Leo Hendrik Baekeland in 1907.

In 1863, a billiard ball manufacturing company, Phelan and Collander, offered a prize of $10,000 to anyone who could find a substitute for natural ivory in billiard balls. In response to this offer, American printer John W. Hyatt and his brother Isaiah figured out how to form billiard balls out of a recently discovered synthetic chemical called nitrocellulose. By 1871, Hyatt had established two companies to work with this new material, under the name celluloid, and the plastics industry was born.

The word plastic has a wide usage and a broad definition. Most often it refers to materials that, while solid in their final forms, take on liquid or shapeable states during earier phases. Modern plastics can assume many shapes and forms and exhibit a rich variety of physical and chemical properties. Most importantly, the development of plastics has made it possible to design materials that exactly suit their uses.