Who invented plastic?

Plastic bags are daily necessities that can be seen everywhere in our lives, so who invented plastic? It was actually a photographer’s experiment in the darkroom that led to the creation of the original plastic.

Alexander Parks has many hobbies, photography is one of them. In the 19th century, people couldn’t buy ready-made photographic film and chemicals as they do today, and often had to make what they needed themselves. So every photographer must also be a chemist. One of the materials used in photography is “collagen”, which is a solution of “nitrocellulose”, ie, a solution of nitrocellulose in alcohol and ether. At the time it was used to glue light-sensitive chemicals to glass to make the equivalent of today’s photographic film. In the 1850s, Parks looked at different ways of dealing with collodion. One day he tried mixing collodion with camphor. To his surprise, the mixing resulted in a bendable, hard material. Parks called the substance “Paxine,” and that was the first plastic. Parks made all kinds of objects out of “Paxine”: combs, pens, buttons and jewelry prints. Parks, however, was not very business-minded and lost money on his own business ventures.

In the 20th century, people began to discover new uses for plastics. Almost everything in the home can be made with some kind of plastic. It was left to other inventors to continue to develop and profit from Parks’ work. John Wesley Hayat, a printer from New York, saw the opportunity in 1868, when a company that made billiards complained of a shortage of ivory. Hayat improved the manufacturing process and gave “Pakxin” a new name – “celluloid”. He got a ready market from billiard manufacturers, and it wasn’t long before he was making a variety of products out of plastic. Early plastics were prone to fire, which limited the range of products that could be made from it. The first plastic to successfully withstand high temperatures was “Berkelet”. Leo Backlund received the patent in 1909. In 1909, Baekeland in the United States synthesized phenolic plastics for the first time.

In the 1930s, nylon was introduced again, and it was called “a fiber composed of coal, air and water, thinner than spider silk, stronger than steel, and better than silk”. Their appearance laid the foundation for the invention and production of various plastics thereafter. Due to the development of the petrochemical industry in the Second World War, the raw material of plastics replaced coal with petroleum, and the plastics manufacturing industry also developed rapidly. Plastic is a very light substance that can be softened by heating it at a very low temperature, and it can be shaped into anything you want. Plastic products are bright in color, light in weight, not afraid of falling, economical and durable. Its advent not only brings a lot of convenience to people’s lives, but also greatly promotes the development of the industry.