While setting out to create insulation, he was the first to invent real plastic and thus changed the world.
Nievo Backlund is a Belgian-born chemical industrialist who has a knack for spotting profit opportunities. In the 1890s he invented Velox and achieved success. Velox is an improved photographic paper that eliminates the need for photographers to use sunlight to form images. With Velox, they could rely on artificial light, which at that time meant gas lights, and then electric lights. This is a more reliable and convenient way of photography.
In 1899, George Eastman's Photographic and Development Services wanted to make photography a household activity and purchased all the rights to Velox for the then-obvious price of one million dollars.
As a result of this unexpected stroke of luck, Backlund, his wife Qin Lin and their two children moved to Slug Rock, a grand estate in the Junkers, New York, where they can overlook the hudson river. In a warehouse he converted into a laboratory, he moved towards his next bigger goal. The rapidly developing electrical appliance industry seemed to have only one word for him: insulator.
The initial tease for Backlund - whom many called "Dr. Backlund" - was the rising cost of shellac. Over many centuries, this resinous secretion deposited on trees by insects has spawned a cottage industry in South Asia. There, farmers heated and filtered the shellac to create a lacquer used to cover and preserve wood products. Shellac also happens to be an effective insulator. Early electrical workers used it as an insulating jacket for electrical coils, laminating layers of paper with shellac together to form a circle of insulation.
In the first years of the 20th century, electrification became extremely urgent and demand for shellac quickly exceeded supply. Backlund thought it would be great if he could find a synthetic fiber that could replace shellac.
Others are almost pushing him to do this. As early as 1872, German chemist Adolf van Beuye was studying the hard residue that collected at the bottom of glassware that had been containing phenol, a rosin-like solvent distilled from coal tar. A deposit of reactants between the gas industry, which produces large amounts of it) and formaldehyde, an aromatic liquid distilled from benzene alcohol. Van Boye set his sights on new synthetic dyes, not insulators. To him, the residue in the glassware had no chemical meaning.
For Backlund and others looking for business opportunities in the nascent electrical appliance industry, the waste in the glassware was a beacon pointing to something great. Certain conditions such as ingredients, light and pressure that are difficult to control are all problems to be solved. The challenge for Backlund and his opponents was to find conditions that would produce a more workable shellac-like substance. Ideally, the substance should break down in solution to create an insulating paint that is as malleable as rubber.
Around 1904, Backlund and his assistants began to search. Three years later, after pages and pages of laboratory notebooks were filled with failed experiments, Backlund finally developed a material. He named it "Bakelite" in his notebook. Finally, It became his "wood gluer", with which he could control the formaldehyde-phenol reaction in more ways than before.
Starting by heating phenol and formaldehyde (in the presence of an acid or base to enable the reaction) produces a shellac-like liquid that coats surfaces as well as paint; further heating will Turning the liquid into a pasty, more viscous substance. Then, when Backlund put this stuff into a wood gluer, he obtained a hard, translucent, infinitely malleable substance. In one word: plastic.
After he filled out the patent application, he quickly began letting other chemists know about his invention. In 1909, Backlund announced the world's earliest fully synthetic plastic to the world at a meeting of the New York Chapter of the American Chemical Society. Potential customers discovered that plastic could be made into a variety of malleable insulators, such as valve parts, pipe plugs, billiard balls, knobs, buttons, knife handles and a variety of other things.
This is 20th century alchemy. From something as ugly as coal tar came such a variety of substances. But this wasn't the first plastic.
Celluloid has been widely used commercially as a substitute for tortoise shells, horns, bones and other materials for decades. It has long earned a reputation as a cheap imitation of some better traditional materials. It originated from chemically treated cotton and other materials. Cellulose-containing plants. Bakelite is completely manufactured in a laboratory and is 100% synthetic material.
Backlund established the General Bakelite Company, which not only produced bakelite but also operated the licensing rights to allow others to produce bakelite. Competitors quickly sold "off" products, and Thomas Edison used them in a failed attempt to dominate the nascent recording industry with "unbreakable" recording discs. The introduction of unnatural Bakelite led to a reprint of the "Intel Inside" trademark in the early 20th century. Items made from the real thing carry the "Authentic Mark" and are accompanied by the Bakelite name. With the resulting patent war, Backlund negotiated a merger with his competitors, making him the true helmsman of the Bakelite empire.
Bakelite has become so prominent in many places that companies are promoting it as "a material with more than one use." Bakelite became a versatile material, used in everything from cigarette holders and rosary beads to radio casings, distribution covers and telephone covers. Backlund's story on the cover of Time magazine in 1924 reported that those familiar with Bakelite's potential claimed: "Within a few years, Bakelite will be used in every mechanical device of modern civilization."
Bakelite is the forerunner of the plastic age. Subsequently, researchers have developed a series of plastics in large quantities.
In 1945, the first year after Backlund's death, the annual production of plastics in the United States exceeded 400,000 tons. In 1979, 12 years after The Graduate, annual production of plastic surpassed annual production of steel. Last year, nearly 47 million tons of plastic were produced.
Plastic is everywhere today, from the fillings we put in dental cavities to the chips in our computers. Researchers are developing stretchable semiconductors made of plastic instead of silicon wafers so they can create wonders like flat-screen TV screens that hang like scrolls on your living room wall. stand up.
Plastic may not be as vilified now as it was in 1967, but it's still something people both love and hate. Every time the grocery store clerk asks you, “Paper or plastic?” the options are quietly opening up, old and new, natural and synthetic, biodegradable and non-biodegradable. The customer's mind unfolds at the moment when the answer needs to be determined.