It was the huge popularity of billiards, combined with this fear of a dwindling ivory supply, that led to the development of plastic, a material that “came to define the modern world,” ...
“The billiard ball has to have certain physical properties. It has to rebound properly. It has to be of a certain density,” one billiards expert explained ....The only material that would do everything the game required was top-grade ivory... In the search for a substitute to this expensive and difficult-to-obtain material, a major company that made billiards supplies, Phelan and Collender, offered a $10,000 reward (several hundred thousand dollars in today’s money) to anybody who could invent one.
Although Alexander Parkes managed to produce the first material that approximated ivory, Parkesine was didn’t lend itself to commercial-scale manufacture. Celluloid, developed by John Wesley Hyatt, did.
“Celluloid and its predecessors were all made with nitrocellulose, also known as pyroxylin, flash paper and gun cotton,” Davis writes. “As you might guess from that string of names, these plastics were highly flammable, and when used in billiard balls, they had some, well, interesting results.”
Occasionally, as Hyatt himself recalled, two balls hitting each other would produce “a mild explosion like a percussion guncap.”
Celluloid was the original plastic, and it didn't stop there.
the history guy explains that plastic made luxury items affordable for the middle class: and discusses Celluloid, the original plastic and how it's use spread from billiard balls to many many other items, and led scientists to develop more modern (and safer) versions of plastic.
not to mention making cheap photographs and movies and saving the elephants from extinction.
No comments:
Post a Comment