"Plastic Arts," Feature Article, June 2007

plastic arts

The chemistry that has formed so many of the objects in our world traces its roots to an accidental discovery 100 years ago.

by Frank Wicks

the last century has variously been described as the Auto Age, the Electric Age, the Atomic Age, and the Computer Age. Each of these new technologies has dramatically changed the world and the way we live. For the same reason, we could also call it the Age of Synthetic Plastics, to reflect the materials from which ever-increasing numbers of durable and disposable products are made. The American Chemistry Council reports that the United States now produces over 100 billion pounds of plastics each year.

The plastics industry had a somewhat accidental birth. Unlike many of the creative entrepreneurs of the time—Edison, say, or Eastman—the inventor's name never became a household word, although the name of his product did.

In 1907, Leo Hendrik Baekeland was working in his private chemistry lab at his estate in Yonkers, N.Y. He was trying to develop an alternative to shellac as an insulating material for the rapidly growing electric industry. Shellac was processed from extractions from beetles that were parasites in trees in Southeast Asia. The United States was importing 50 million pounds of shellac each year.

Baekeland built a pressure vessel in which he was heating a mixture of phenol (C₆H₅OH) and formaldehyde (CH₂O). The result turned out to be a resin that could be molded into any shape and then permanently hardened under high temperature and pressure. The resulting compound was "polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride." It was a moldable plastic that could also withstand high temperatures without distorting.

Although he discovered the formula by accident, Leo Baekeland knew he was onto something with Bakelite, "the material of a thousand uses." The material was manufactured in an autoclave called the Bakelizer.

Like the classic entrepreneurs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Baekeland combined inventiveness with business and marketing skills. He was issued U.S. Patent 942,699 with the vague title of "Heat and Pressure" and named his material Bakelite.

The trade name referred to the inventor and to the material properties of the product. Baekeland formed the General Bakelite Co. to produce and market this revolutionary new material. The pressure vessel used to produce Bakelite in commercial quantities was called a Bakelizer. The National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has at least two of the vessels, including the original one that Baekeland used in his lab at Yonkers.

Baekeland's first intended use of Bakelite was for phonograph records, but he quickly realized that there were other possibilities, so it was soon marketed as "The Material of a Thousand Uses." This proved to be an understatement. The later logo for the company was the letter B over an infinity sign. It denoted the product with an infinite number of uses. That may prove to be an overstatement, but considering the track record of plastics, the jury is still out on that one.

Bakelite early on was used for telephones. George Eastman used it for his Kodak cameras. It was used for toasters, ashtrays, clocks, electrical fittings, toys, and umbrella handles. It was also used for guitars and the mouthpieces of musical instruments.

The moldable Bakelite, which could be produced in a variety of colors, became a preferred medium for what is known as the Art Deco movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The first radios were part of a home's furniture. The wealthy had radios made of the finest wood. Those of more humble means could have radios mounted in Bakelite with a rich variety of contours and colors.

Because of its hardness and durability, Bakelite was considered a material for pennies during World War II. The Russians used Bakelite for magazines in rifles and for a structural material in combat airplanes.

Bakelite was molded into many shapes for jewelry and various trinkets that cost pennies during the Great Depression. The artist Andy Warhol became a prolific collector of Bakelite artifacts. His collection was auctioned for surprising prices after his death in 1987. For example, Sotheby's, which conducted the auction over a couple of days in the spring of 1988, said their two lots of Art Deco costume jewelry each expected to sell for $300 to $400. One actually brought $1,650 and the other $5,500. Vintage items made of Bakelite, as well as later copies of them, are now traded on eBay.com.

Franklin Was an Early Influence

The man who started it all, Leo Hendrik Baekeland, was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1863—the same year as Henry Ford—in humble circumstances. His father was an illiterate shoemaker and his mother worked as a maid. As a youth, he was inspired by reading Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. The life of Franklin as a successful businessman, scientist, and citizen provided the young Leo Baekeland with a role model for success and with an admiration for the United States.

His mother encouraged her bright and diligent son to follow his dreams. He enrolled at the University of Ghent, where he developed a passion for chemistry and photography. He was awarded a doctorate on his 21st birthday.

He started teaching at the University of Bruges and became recognized as a rising academic star. He married Celine Swarts, whose father was a senior chemistry professor and his mentor. In a move that would eventually secure the family's fortunes, Baekeland also started a photography business about the same time, and in the course of operating it, he invented easier-to-use photographic printing supplies.

In 1889, at the age of 26, Baekeland was awarded a traveling scholarship. He first went to England, and then he and his wife proceeded to travel to the United States.

He started working in the field of photographic chemistry. It was the time that George Eastman was building his Eastman Kodak company into a global business that would include cameras, film, and developing.

Eastman was a self-taught chemist who developed a better dry emulsion to replace the wet emulsions that had to be applied to plates at the time of picture taking. Eastman succeeded with a dry emulsion that could be applied to a film that could be rolled into a camera.

Baekeland was experimenting with electrical insulators at his private laboratory in Yonkers, N.Y., when he launched the synthetics plastics industry.

Eastman had succeeded in making the taking of pictures as easy as using a pencil. A remaining challenge was to make more sensitive photographic paper for the final picture. Photographic paper needed an intense light source, which at that time could be provided only by the sun.

Baekeland understood the challenge, and proceeded to develop a much more sensitive printing paper, which he named Velox. It could make prints by using the much less intense light from a kerosene lamp or from an electric light bulb.

George Eastman recognized the importance of Velox and, in 1899, paid Baekeland $750,000 for exclusive rights to the Velox paper.

The Velox invention had made a 36-year-old Leo Baekeland independently wealthy. It allowed him to move his family to a large estate in Yonkers, called Snug Hill. He converted the carriage house into a chemistry laboratory, where his pursuit of a synthetic shellac led him to the accidental invention of the synthetic plastic that would be named Bakelite.

Baekeland continued to be an active experimenter and citizen for the remainder of his life. He served as the president of the American Chemical Society. He served on government committees with Thomas Edison, who was also an outstanding experimental chemist as well as a prolific inventor.

The increasing use of Bakelite in consumer products made Baekeland a public personality. He had been featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1924. He would later be cited by Time, in 1999, as one of the outstanding scientists of the 20th century.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio, was started in 1973 with Thomas Edison as the first to be inducted. Charles Goodyear, who learned how to make India rubber into an industrial product, and Leo Baekeland were the first chemists to be inducted. The American Chemical Society started a historic landmarks program in 1993, and the first object that it designated was the Bakelizer, the autoclave used to make Bakelite.

When Leo Baekeland's son was born in 1896, he was named George Washington Baekeland, suggesting an immigrant's admiration for his adopted country. The father had hoped that his son would take over the business, but George's interests took him in other directions.

George joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and flew Caproni bombers in Italy during World War I. He also complained that his commanding officer was too talkative and emotional. The officer was Fiorella LaGuardia, whose gift for speech earned him fame as mayor of New York City.

George thrived on adventure. He went to the Colorado School of Mines. He prospected for minerals and petroleum from South America and Africa to the arctic regions. His father lured him back as vice president of the family company, but disagreements followed. In 1939, General Bakelite Corp. was sold to Union Carbide for $16 million.

Leo Baekeland has been described as increasingly eccentric during his final years. This judgment may be based upon his pursuit of new interests. He moved to Florida, where he raised lions and developed a huge tropical garden.

He died at the age of 80 in 1944. He is buried north of Yonkers in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery that was made famous in the writings of Washington Irving.

Frank Wicks, a mechanical engineering professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., is a frequent contributor to Mechanical Engineering.