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"It's gone from one little sample of brown
material in a man's hand to just being everywhere," said Alison
Conboy, an exhibit organizer. "It's hard to imagine a house that
doesn't have them."
Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland created
his phenol-formaldehyde polymer resin -- Bakelite -- in 1907.
Although scientists had long tinkered with different types of
plastics, so-called because of their malleability, his was the first
fully synthetic material ever made.
Electrically resistant, chemically stable,
heat-resistant, shatter-, crack- and salt-proof, the material was an
enormous success. Soon Baekeland's New Jersey factory was cranking
it out for use in billiard balls, switchboards, tabletops, counters,
gears and washing machines.
New products were introduced in rapid
succession: rayon, cellophane, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride,
known as PVC, joined Bakelite in the plastics revolution.
Some of the new products touched off consumer
hysteria. Touted by DuPont Co. in 1939 as "smooth as silk, strong as
steel," nylons sparked melees as women mobbed department stores to
replace their old stockings.
"Plastics" was the one-word piece of career
advice offered to Dustin Hoffman's character in the 1967 film, "The
Graduate." Perhaps more memorable was Anne Bancroft's nylon-clad
leg.
The principle behind nylon's success --
replacing an expensive organic material with a stronger, cheaper
synthetic one -- was repeated throughout the century. Plastic
bottles, Styrofoam cups, Teflon-coated frying pans, Tupperware
containers, Formica counters and plastic wrap invaded the kitchen,
while men and women all over the world shed their silk and cotton
for acrylic and polyester.
Members of the plastic family have a dizzying
diversity of uses. PVC can be part of a doorframe or a piece of
insulation, but it is also cut into credit cards, turntable records,
upholstery or high-heeled PVC boots, such as the ones worn by Julia
Roberts in "Pretty Woman."
Plastic is already all around us, but someday
it might course through our veins.
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"The nature of plastic is such that you can
create a molecule that's very similar to hemoglobin -- the cells
that carry oxygen," Conboy said. Beyond being more painless to
obtain, the material can be carried and stored more easily than its
bright red counterpart.
Silicon might be more closely associated with
the computer age, but that could soon change as circuits are printed
directly onto plastic chips. The flexible circuitry could be used
for foldable displays -- such as electronic pages that can be
stuffed into a pocket, solar panels that can be draped over tents,
or even electronic clothes.
Although planes are no strangers to plastic --
some are made of nothing else -- the next generation of plastics
could fly them into the science fiction age. Shape memory polymers
change shape as they are heated -- and could be used to build planes
whose wings shorten or lengthen in midflight. But with plastic
promise comes plastic peril.
The overwhelming majority of plastics are made
from nonrenewable sources, and less than 10 percent of all plastic
is recycled, the museum said. The same resilience that made the
material ideal has also meant its environmental consequences last
and last -- potentially forever.
One hundred billion plastic bags are discarded
each year in the United States alone, according to the Worldwatch
Institute, an environmental research agency.
Although plastic made its debut as a
replacement for expensive organic materials, bioplastics -- made
from plant matter -- have taken the material full circle.
Conboy pointed to one of the museum's exhibits,
the Toyota Motor Corp.'s I-unit, an electric car built almost
entirely of plastic derived from corn, sugar cane and the African
kenaf plant.
"(Plastic) has changed so much in the past 100
years," she said. "Who knows what it will bring in the next
century."
The Science Museum's free exhibition is called
"Plasticity -- 100 years of making plastics."
[Text copied
from file received from AP
Digital; article by Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press writer]
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