The question you have to ask yourself today is how do you feel about plastic? It’s incredibly useful and versatile, of course, and has made a lot of things we depend on both possible and affordable. On the other hand, when you take your car to the shop because of a suspicious noise in the engine and discover that it was built with plastic parts that have worn out and the repair is expensive, you might be less pleased about plastic. Although plastic can be both structurally reliable and resistant to corrosion — there is at least one bridge in New England built with load-bearing plastic beams, and they will never rust. But maybe it would be better if plastic did rust; just visit any landfill (or the side of most roads) to see all the plastic trash that could be years old.
Anyway, there are plenty of points of view about plastic. The reason today is a day to consider them is because Leo Baekeland was born in Belgium on November 14, 1863, and he invented the stuff. Baekeland studied chemistry in Ghent University and earned a PhD when he was just 21. He became a professor of physics and chemistry, and received a travel scholarship enabling him to take his wife on visits to universities in England and New York in 1889. Ghent University might have regretted the scholarship when Baekeland decided to stay in the US.
He’d been convinced by two people to stay: a professor at Columbia University and the founder of a photographic company. Baekeland had invented a new photographic process back in Belgium, and he was soon working for the H.T. Anthony photo company. He came up with “Velox,” the first successful photographic paper. But in the 1890s the US was in a recession and he couldn’t find any investors.
A few years later, when the economy improved, Baekeland and a partner founded the Nepera Chemical Company. “Nepera” isn’t a Belgian term; it’s just the name of the area where the company was located. They were able to sell the company to Eastman Kodak for $750,000, and Baekeland personally received well over $200,000 — a considerable fortune in 1899. He bought a big house and set up his own private laboratory.
He couldn’t continue research into photography, though; the sale of Nepera included a noncompete clause. So he invented a new kind of battery that became the first product of the Hooker Chemical Company — which, for US readers, became notorious decades later as the polluter behind the Love Canal tragedy in the 1970s. After the battery, he turned to synthetic resins, which he felt was “the best chance for the quickest possible results.” He freely admitted that his main goal was to make money. His first success was a coating called “Novolak,” which is still used today in manufacturing. Then in 1907 he came up with a substance that was hard and moldable: polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride! That doesn’t really trip musically off the tongue, so he called it Bakelite.
He patented it, founded the Bakelite Corporation, and sure enough, made a lot more money. He sold the company in 1939 and retired, only to become a recluse, eat all his meals out of cans, and obsessing about the enormous tropical garden on his estate in Florida. He lived until 1944, at which time he held over 100 patents, his old company was producing 175,000 tons of Bakelite per year, and there were already tens of thousands of products made of plastic, including some of the first plastic imitation house plants — none of which were included in his tropical garden.
