Technology & Medicine › Electric age
Synthetic plastics (Bakelite)
1907 (Bakelite); nylon 1935· Invention or discovery· Tools, energy & materials
Well documentedSolid records, physical evidence or scientific consensus.
Fully man-made materials molded from chemicals, starting with Leo Baekeland's Bakelite in 1907, made from phenol and formaldehyde.
See it on the Technology & Medicine map →How it works
Earlier plastics such as celluloid (1860s–70s) were made from plant cellulose. In 1907 Leo Baekeland, a Belgian-American chemist in Yonkers, New York, reacted phenol and formaldehyde under heat and pressure to make Bakelite, the first fully synthetic plastic. It was hard, heat resistant and did not conduct electricity, ideal for plugs, switches, radios and telephones. Chemists then made many more: PVC, polystyrene, and nylon, invented by Wallace Carothers at DuPont in 1935.
Why it mattered
Plastics became cheap, light, moldable materials for everything from packaging to medical devices. World output now exceeds 400 million tonnes a year, and plastic waste is a major problem.
How we know
Baekeland's patents and diaries and his 1909 announcement to the American Chemical Society; surviving Bakelite products; DuPont lab records for nylon; industry production statistics.
Still unknown or debated
How long plastics take to break down, and the health effects of microplastics now found in blood, lungs and oceans, are active research questions.
Connections (2)
▸Petroleum industry later supplied the feedstock of Synthetic plastics (Bakelite)Mostly agreed
The connection
Bakelite was made from coal-tar chemicals, not oil. From the 1920s to the 1950s, oil refining and natural-gas processing yielded cheap ethylene, propylene and benzene, which became the building blocks of polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC and polystyrene. Today almost all plastics, by common estimates about 99%, come from fossil fuels.
When and how
Union Carbide began making ethylene from petroleum gases in West Virginia around 1920; ICI discovered polyethylene in England in 1933; oil-based plastics boomed after World War II.
How sure are we?
Chemical-industry records and production data show the shift from coal-tar and plant feedstocks to oil and natural gas by the 1950s.
Debates and open questions
Whether plastics can move to plant-based or recycled feedstocks at scale is open; estimates of the share of world oil used for plastics vary, roughly 4–8%.
▸Synthetic plastics (Bakelite) insulated the plugs, switches and wires of Electric power and the gridWell documented
The connection
Electricity needs insulators that resist heat and do not crack. Before Bakelite, makers used rubber, porcelain, shellac and gutta-percha. Bakelite could be molded cheaply into plugs, sockets, switches and radio parts. Later plastics, especially PVC from the 1930s to the 1950s, replaced rubber as the jacket on household and building wiring.
When and how
From about 1910, when the General Bakelite Company supplied electrical makers; PVC-insulated cable spread in Germany in the 1930s and in the US and UK after World War II.
How we know
Baekeland marketed Bakelite as an electrical insulator from the start; industry catalogs and wiring codes record the change from rubber to plastic insulation.
Debates and open questions
Little is disputed; the open issue is safety, since burning PVC releases toxic fumes, and some fire codes now require low-smoke cable in buildings.