When did plastics begin to be used in tableware production?

Wonderful moment of plastic's century-old history (1)

The exhibition commemorating the centenary of synthetic plastics at the London Science Museum, which started on May 22nd, was named "Plasticity". As early as March 1926, the American Plastic magazine also defined plastic in this way: "The nature of a substance enables it to form any desired shape, unlike non-plastic substances, which need to be chiseled."

In fact, the London Science Museum held an unprecedented plastic exhibition as early as 1934, and even a room made entirely of plastic was filled with plastic articles.

In 2007, the exhibition exhibited 400 classic plastic products, including 1938 coffin made of phenolic plastic, Ekco radio with plastic shell, decorative art wall clock and exquisite cigarette case, PVC raincoat and boots in 1960s, 1968 space style "Home of the Future" designed by Dutch architect Marti Zunorun, and 2000 made of polyurethane.

Susan Mosman, curator of the Science Museum, said, "The story of plastics is one of the core clues of the material world in the past century. With plastics, there will be a consumer revolution, and radios, televisions, computers, synthetic fibers and disposable appliances can be produced on a large scale. "

The beginning of the plastic age

The first fully synthetic plastic came from the Belgian-American Leo Hendrick Baekeland, who registered the patent of phenolic plastic on July 4th, 2000 years ago.

Baekeland, the son of a shoemaker and a maid, was born in Ghent on 1863. 1884, at the age of 2 1, Baekeland received his doctorate from Ghent university. At the age of 24, he became a professor of physics and chemistry at Bruges Teachers College. 1889 just married the daughter of a university tutor, and Baekeland won a travel scholarship to go to the United States to engage in chemical research.

Encouraged by Professor Columbia University, Baekeland stayed in the United States and worked for a photography supplier. This led him to invent Velox photographic paper a few years later, which can be developed in light, not in the sun. 1893, Baekeland resigned and established Nepera chemical company.

Under the impact of new products, Eastman Kodak, a photographic equipment manufacturer, can't stand it. 1898, after two negotiations, KeDafang bought the patent right of Velox photographic paper for 750,000 US dollars (equivalent to the current150,000 US dollars). However, Kodak soon found that this formula didn't work, and Baekeland's answer was: This is normal. Inventors will omit one or two steps in patent documents to prevent infringement. Kodak was told that they bought the patent, but not all the knowledge. After paying another $654.38 million, Kodak knew that the secret was in a solution.

A Hundred Years of Wonderful Moments of Plastics (2)

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After digging the first bucket of gold, Baekeland bought a mansion overlooking the Hudson River in yonkers, near New York, transformed a barn into a fully equipped private laboratory, and cooperated with others to build an experimental factory in Brooklyn. At that time, the booming power industry included a huge market for insulating materials. The first temptation Baekeland smelled was the soaring price of shellac, a natural insulating material that has been produced by cottage industries in South Asia for centuries. After investigation, Baekeland took finding a substitute for shellac as its first commercial goal. At that time, chemists began to realize that many natural resins and fibers that can be used as coatings, adhesives and fabrics are polymers, that is, macromolecules with repetitive structures, and began to look for components and methods to synthesize polymers.

As early as 1872, German chemist Adolf von Baer discovered that there were some stubborn residues at the bottom of the glass tube after the reaction between phenol and formaldehyde. However, Bayer's eyes are on synthetic dyes, not insulating materials. For him, this sticky insoluble substance is a dead end. For Baekeland and others, this kind of thing is a bright road sign. Starting from 1904, Baekeland began to study this reaction. At first, we got a liquid, namely phenolic shellac, called phenolic varnish, but the market was not successful. Three years later, he got a paste-like sticky substance, which became a translucent hard plastic-phenolic plastic after molding.

The difference is that celluloid comes from chemically treated cotton and other cellulose-containing plant materials, while phenolic plastic is the first fully synthetic plastic in the world. Baekeland named it "Bakelite" after himself. Fortunately, his British colleague Sir James Swinburne filed a patent application only one day later, otherwise the English name of phenolic plastic might be "Swinburnet". 1909 On February 8th, Baekeland disclosed the plastic at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Phenolic plastics are insulating, stable, heat-resistant, corrosion-resistant and nonflammable. Baekeland claims to be a "multi-purpose material". Especially in the rapidly developing automobile, radio and electric power industries, it is made into plugs, sockets, radio and telephone housings, propellers, valves, gears and pipes. At home, it appears on billiards, handles, buttons, knife handles, desktops, pipes, thermos bottles, electric thermos bottles, pens and artificial jewelry. This is alchemy in the 20th century. From cheap products such as coal tar, materials with such a wide range of uses can be obtained. A cover story of Time Magazine 1924 said: People familiar with the potential of phenolic plastics say that it will appear in every kind of mechanical equipment in modern civilization in a few years. Time magazine called him "the father of plastics" on May 20th 1940. Of course, phenolic plastics also have disadvantages. It will become dark after heating, with only three colors: brown, black or dark green, which are easy to break.

19 10, Baekeland established the General Phenolic Plastics Company, and started production in its factory in New Jersey. Soon there were competitors, especially Redmanol and Condensite, two solid plastics. Edison tried to control the market by making records with them, but failed. The appearance of counterfeit phenolic plastics also made Baekeland adopt genuine labels similar to today's "Intel Inside" on its products very early. 1926 patent protection expired, and a large number of similar products flooded into the market. After negotiation, Baekeland merged with its rivals and owned a real phenolic empire.

As a scientist, Baekeland is famous for his fame and fortune. He holds more than 65,438+000 patents and many honorary positions. He was also in the Science and Business Hall of Fame after his death. He not only has the business acumen that scientists rarely have, but also has too many dull lives. Besides movies and cars, his biggest hobby is hanging out on yachts in shirts and shorts. But it is said that he only has a formal suit and always wears a pair of old sports shoes. In order to make him change his clothes, the artist's wife picked out a British blue twill serge suit worth 125 in the clothing store and paid the shopkeeper 100 in advance to display the suit in the window and hang a $25 label. That night, Baekeland learned from his wife and son that such a good thing was cheap and good, and bought it the next day. On my way home, I met Samuel Antmeyer, a neighbor and lawyer. Baekeland's new clothes were immediately bought by the other party for 75 dollars, which became an example of his pride in his shrewdness towards his wife.

1939, when Baekeland retired, his son George Washington Baekeland had no intention of going to the sea to do business, and the company sold it to Union Carbide Company for1650,000 US dollars (equivalent to 200 million US dollars today). 1945, one year after Baekeland's death, the annual output of plastics in the United States exceeded 400,000 tons, 1979, surpassing the representative of the industrial age-steel. In this year's exhibition at the London Science Museum, Baekeland's great-grandson Xiu Calaque holds a 1930s urea-formaldehyde plastic mobile phone in one hand and a mobile phone made of biodegradable plastic in the other.

Wonderful moment of plastics in a hundred years (3)

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● Nylon stockings revolution

The early development of plastics is empirical. For 60 years, people have not understood the formation and structure of polymers. Until the 1920s, German organic chemist holman staudinger put forward the concept of macromolecules. Shortly before Baekeland washed his hands, another milestone in the history of plastics appeared, which was another accident. 1926 Charles sting, research director of DuPont, suggested that some basic research should be carried out.

For stine, chemical discovery is like gathering all strangers at a family gathering. The following year, the company decided to allocate $250,000 a year for this purpose. From 65438 to 0928, Dr. Wallace carothers, who was only 32 years old, was hired as the head of the Department of Organic Chemistry in the Institute of Basic Chemistry. Sting's request is: "only explore the characteristics and properties of objective phenomena about various substances, and don't care about the specific uses of the discovered phenomena."

Carothers is a doctor of organic chemistry from the University of Illinois. This introverted genius suffers from acute depression. Joining DuPont can help him escape from the suffering platform of Harvard University, and it can also prove whether staudinger's polymer theory is correct, so he takes polymers as the main direction of the Department of Organic Chemistry.

1930 in the experiment of preparing polyester by condensation of ethylene glycol and sebacic acid, carothers colleague Julian Hill put a glass rod into the flask out of instinctive curiosity and gently stirred the melt at the bottom of the flask. When he slowly lifted the glass rod, he was surprised to find an interesting phenomenon: polyester can spin like cotton candy, even after cooling, it will not harden or break, its length can reach several times of the original, and its strength and elasticity are greatly increased. They have a hunch that this property can be used to spin fibers, but the premise is to solve the shortcomings of easy hydrolysis, low melting point and easy solubility in organic solvents.

Even during the Great Depression, DuPont's basic research project was not dissolved, which was indeed fortunate, but the difficult times also brought greater pressure to carothers's laboratories. They must develop a marketable ultra-high molecular fiber to replace the outdated rayon. Carothers' team has submitted about 60 patent applications, but as Elmer Bolton, the new research director, likes to say, none of them made him hear the "cash register jingle". In fact, at the end of 193 1, anxious carothers showed Hill a cyanide capsule hanging on a bracelet.

At the beginning of 1935, the strength and elasticity of polyamide fiber synthesized by pentanediamine and sebacic acid in ether exceeded that of silk, and it was not easy to absorb water and dissolve, but its melting point was low and raw materials were expensive. On February 28th, carothers synthesized polyamide 66 from hexamethylenediamine and adipic acid each containing 6 carbon atoms. The appearance and luster of the fiber stretched by this polymer are no less than that of natural silk, and the wear resistance and strength exceed that of any fiber at that time, and the raw materials are cheap.

1938 in July, DuPont first produced polyamide fiber. In the same month, a toothbrush with polyamide 66 as bristles went on the market and adopted an unusual name-"miracle cluster". 10 year 10 On October 27th, DuPont officially announced the birth of the world's first synthetic fiber, named nylon, which later became the common commodity name of polyamide synthetic fiber.

Starting from the basic research of DuPont company with no clear application purpose, 1 1 year, the investment of 22 million dollars and the efforts of 230 scientists laid the foundation of synthetic fiber industry. Regrettably, carothers failed to see this achievement. From April 65438 to April 0936, carothers, who had just been elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, was sent to the hospital for treatment of severe depression. 1937 On April 29th, a chemist aged 4/kloc-0 swallowed potassium cyanide pills in a hotel in Philadelphia. Paul Flory, his assistant, summed up the theory of polyamide and won the Nobel Prize in chemistry with 1974.

1938 10 The first pair of nylon stockings made in the United States participated in the new york World Expo. This kind of silk stockings is transparent, high in elasticity, light and strong, durable, easy to dry, low in friction coefficient, free from fungi and insects. Dupont's advertising slogan is called "as thin as a spider web, as hard as steel, and more elastic than any ordinary natural fiber". In June 5438+the following year 10, DuPont sold nylon stockings for the first time in the department store in Wilmington, where its headquarters is located, requiring each person to buy only three pairs, and providing the local address. Therefore, fashionable women from all over the country must first book hotels in the city. 1940 On May 5, DuPont was first sold in the United States. Although each person was limited to 1 pair, 5 million pairs were sold out that day. Within seven months, nylon stockings made a profit of $3 million. Many women who can't buy them draw lines on their bare legs and pretend to be stockings. In a poll, nylon stockings is what two-thirds of women want most.

In May of 1940, nylon fiber fabrics began to spread all over the United States, and nylon was also used as gears, bearings and medical sutures in industry. However, when the Pacific War broke out two years later, nylon immediately disappeared from the civilian market and was mainly used to produce military products such as parachutes, military tents, aircraft tire fabrics and military uniforms. Before the war 10, the output of nylon soared 25 times, accounting for more than half of the synthetic fiber in 1964. Up to now, polyamide fiber is still one of the three major synthetic fibers.

The successful synthesis of nylon strongly proves the existence of polymer. It was not until 1953 that staudinger won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on 1926. Once polymer chemistry is really established, new materials such as man-made fibers, cellophane, polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene will soon appear.

Wonderful moment of plastics in a hundred years (4)

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● Plastic culture

In English, plastic is also an emotional adjective. Unfortunately, it often means changeable, unreal and unnatural, implying some hypocrisy or deception. As a ubiquitous part of modern life, the use of plastics has long been ignored. On the contrary, as the product of complex chemical treatment, it is not as real as traditional materials such as wood and metal, and it is difficult to treat, which deteriorates the image.

The root of plastic criticism is that it always turns luxury goods into mass consumer goods. Once any product is owned by everyone, the feeling of cheapness and commonness will follow. /kloc-In the second half of the 0/9th century, cheap suits with celluloid necklines seemed to provide poor people in English slums with the opportunity to dress up as middle class. Someone commented: "But the workmanship of his best suit still looks like a well-dressed craftsman, and no one will recognize him as a middle class." After a long time, celluloid understood that it was curly, yellow and smelly, and it still captured a symbol of class difference. American writer J.B. priestley said in his novel Midnight in the Desert (1937): "In a phenolic house, the plate will not break, but the heart will break." 1957 Richard Hoggatt, a British pop culture scholar, described the changes of working-class families in this way: "Modernism in chain stores is inferior plywood sprayed with colored paint, which is replacing old mahogany furniture, and colorful plastics and chrome-plated biscuit barrels sneak in."

In fact, the identity crisis of plastics has always existed, but it is not that plastics pretend to be nobles. French scholar roland barthes wrote in his novel The Myth from 65438 to 0957 that plastic can be made into barrels or jewelry. 1940, when a full set of nylon clothing appeared at the new york World Expo, a book also predicted the plastic age in this way: "A colorful world far away from moth and rust, a world mainly composed of synthetic materials, which mainly come from widely distributed raw materials. When the smoke clears and reconstruction begins, science will return to the mission of innovation with new strength and resources. We will see a bright, clean and beautiful new world. "

1In March, 999, the article in Time magazine revealed our ambivalence towards plastics: "They like the kitchen countertops covered with Formica plastic which is cheap and easy to clean, and envy the real touch of marble and wood." "Every time a supermarket clerk asks you' paper bag or plastic bag', whether it is new or old, natural or synthetic, degradable or non-degradable, these questions will quietly swirl in every shopper's mind." Graham swift, an English writer, asked in his novel From Now on (1992), "Is the plastic cup less real than the porcelain cup? Is nylon stockings not as real as silk stockings? More importantly, is plastic more deceptive than a stage performance or a poem? "

As Peter Dormer, a design historian, said: "If you come into contact with plastic plates, imitation wood, printed cotton curtains, industrial printed fabrics and hotel lobby-style pseudo-luxury goods in your daily life, how can you imagine or care about what others call good taste-Bauhaus's modernist natural order, Peter Mayer decoration in Germany and English classicism in King George's time? If you don't realize this, don't think about it. In any case, it is perfect to be satisfied with what you have now. "

● Expensive plastics

Plastics seem to have a long-standing reputation for being low-grade and cheap. Roland barthes said: "The most exposed part of plastic is the sound of an empty flat plate. Its noise is its destruction, and its color is the same. It can only retain the most mediocre chemical appearance. "

Plastic is a synthetic material, because it can be molded by hot melt injection molding and is good at imitating original wood, steel or other expensive materials. 1866, the original intention of Hyatt USA to use celluloid is said to replace ivory billiards that almost destroyed elephants. At that time, one ivory could only make five billiards. Of course, the imitation of plastic is only for practical purposes, and the use value drowns the aesthetic value, so it is impossible to win noble status.

Bakelite invented by Baekeland in 1907 was originally used as "alchemy" for thousands of products in the 20th century. At first, his patent liberated the design of radio. Using this bakelite or bakelite, British Echo Company asked Canadian architect Wells Coates to design a classic circular Ekco AD65 radio with three adjustment switches arranged in an arc around the speaker. 193 1 year, a respected Belgian-American chemist Baekeland invented the formula of black bakelite. In the same year, Ericsson of Sweden also introduced the black bakelite telephone with turntable, which replaced the metal body in the past and took the lead in forming large-scale and standardized production.

Before the appearance of cheap labels, plastic had enjoyed a good reputation as a material for making artificial gem, and early decorative arts artists used it in jewelry design together with precious stones, platinum or artificial crystals. 1956, the German Braun super phonograph "Snow Coffin" is a rectangular box made of white plastic and light wood, covered with plexiglass cover. At that time, this transparent synthetic resin material was a "treasure of modern industry".

After the 1960s, Philips, Sony, Braun and other big companies often put some "well-designed" models in black plastic square boxes, and the appearance details were compressed to a minimum. Prior to this, TV, audio and other electrical appliances have always followed the style of wooden furniture. This "nameless" rational design has changed the form of many household appliances since then, and its influence has continued until now.

What really delights in plastics are European designers who are popular, radical or anti-design. They don't care whether this material is considered cheap, mediocre or tasteless. The unprecedented smooth surface, organic modeling and bright colors of plastic furniture can better express their creativity. 1969, Allen Jones, an Englishman, asked a naked plastic woman crawling on her hands and feet to hold up the coffee table on the glass table with her back. This is of course a vulgar design obsessed with pornography, but a Boalum lamp with many small bulbs in a blow chair, a green foam cactus hanger or a soft and transparent plastic pipe are all classics in the history of Italian design.

It was the Italians who used plastics in furniture design very early. From then on, all possible tables and chairs can be made cheaply under the simple impact of the machine. It was also the Italians who sold cheap plastics to sky-high prices. Many kitchen utensils like Alessi are made of plastic, with a lot of rabelais humor and occasionally some dirty jokes.

Since the birth of the first generation iMac desktop computer, the whole world has a new feeling about the application of plastics in IT product design. Before Apple, Swatch was another story in which cheap plastic saved the whole expensive Swiss watch industry. Now, almost every consumer product in our life depends on plastic, at least a shell or a part. Just like the "metal" shell of a mobile phone, the thin plastic surface is often coated with metal, crystal and other textures. To get some valuable optical illusions.

Philip Stark once described plastic as "a material with aristocratic temperament", and his view is that "plastic is the only real ecological material today, and it is impossible to cut down a tree and stand there with you as a fool". If plastics are used in durable products, recycling may indeed be beneficial to the ecology.

A Hundred Years of Wonderful Moments of Plastics (5)

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● Anti-plastic, need a reason?

A group feeling of being tired of plastics and advocating natural materials is shifting from simple design thinking to mass consumers.

At the beginning of 2005, a Canadian named ZapWizard posted his own mahogany case iPod on flickr photo album, which became a popular connection between FMCG office and design circle overnight. Many people are surprised by ZapWizard's aversion to iPod assembly line identity, and even realize that consumers hate plastic identity in the new century. At that time, the most eye-catching forum title was undoubtedly "Plastic gives way to wood, retro or new opportunity". At least the wooden iPod modified by ZapWizard, after polishing and waxing, has the same appearance and feel as engineering plastic, while plastic is easy to peel off paint, the metal shell is subject to magnetic interference, and the leather is easy to stain, which is easy to cause psychological resistance of animal protectors. Behind the ZapWizard phenomenon is actually a group sentiment that is tired of plastics, and the tendency to advocate natural materials is shifting from simple design thinking to mass consumers.

At the end of the 20th century, an investigation report on the global ecological crisis caused by the non-degradation of plastic bags in the natural environment directly changed the public image of plastic products from simple and easy to use to environmental pollution. The composition of PVC and polycarbonate has given all kinds of plastics a bad reputation, and even been directly associated with many diseases by doctors. Plastics do make many material products cheap and affordable for ordinary people. With the plastic assembly line culture, the plastic appearance of every product is the same. Even though the chief marketing officers try their best to create personalized ideas and decorate the plastic itself with patterns and various colors, the plastic refractory products are still carved in the same mold. The global output of plastic products is close to 65438+ billion tons every year, and it is increasing at the rate of 10% every year, which not only directly harms the natural environment, but also makes the craftsmen who play with natural materials such as wood, porcelain, metal and leather in the traditional era completely move towards the ranks of rare craftsmen.

Pure design circles have been reflected in plastics. Memphis, a famous designer who copied Quasar Khahn's inflatable armchair in 1980s, said with emotion: "Plastic may create a strange design image, which can be mass-produced on the assembly line, but it makes the experience cheap. This is not a problem between the rich and the poor, but a problem of the design cost of plastic products. " In fact, when interviewing the design centers of many consumer electronics giants around the world, the injection molding machine must be casually thrown in the corner. For all kinds of designers, plastic product design is closer to the blending of modeling conception and chemistry, and meticulous carving becomes extremely extravagant. Abrasive tools decide everything to become the iron law of industrial age design.

The cheapness of plastic products made people buy too many unnecessary things in 100. Just because it was cheap, plastic products were thrown away when they were worn out. This concept of unrestrained consumption has become more and more intense with the continuous progress of plastic surgery technology. AC Nielsen conducted a survey on the usage rate of plastic watches in 2002. Global/kloc-0.5 to 25-year-old girls have an average of 2.7 watches, of which at least/kloc-0.2 is a swatch, and 73.6% girls don't wear this swatch at all, preferring to let this plastic block with an average price of $65 lie in the drawer and waste batteries. Another example comes from the beverage industry. In the 1970s, Coca-Cola claimed that glass bottles were the best packaging materials, and only glass bottles could really keep the balance between temperature and bubbles. However, in the 1990s, the cost of aluminum cans soared, and the recycling of glass bottles made it difficult for Coca-Cola to globalize, so plastic bottles were put on the front desk. At that time, Business Week listed this as one of the 65,438+000 details of globalization. The beer industry thinks this is a sign of parting ways with the beverage industry. At that time, Freddie, the head of Heineken Beer, sneered: "Only glass bottles and aluminum cans can really guarantee the pressure of carbon dioxide in drinks. Those beverage companies that use plastic bottles have secretly reduced the concentration of carbon dioxide, which is why no brewery will use plastic bottles. The guys who make sugar water just want the children to take the drink away, drink it and throw it away, because the bottle is worthless, and then buy another bottle in the vending machine on the street. Consumers are just sugar merchants' ATMs, not enjoying drinkers. "