The Ely miner., 1937-09-30

COUNTRY newspaper editors
~ have exerted upon Ameri-
can life an influence which is
perhaps second to that of no
other group of men. But one
country editor little dreamed
IS years ago that he had started
something destined to become a
new and amazingly common
factor in the daily life of virtu-
ally all Americans-indeed, in
the lives of persons in every
corner of the world. He simply
believed he had failed to win
/ $4,000.
Now country newspaper editors
are not wealthy as a rule, and John
Wesley Hyatt, editor and printer of
Starkey, N. Y, was no exception.
He had ideas, though. And when a
billiard ball manufacturer, discour-
aged by the expense of stalking
African pachyderms for the raw
material of which his product was
made, offered $4,000 for a, synthetic
ivory substitute, Hyatt began some
serious tinkering with test tubes, re-
torts and Bunsen burner in the
back of his shop.
Somehow, between type cases, an
old Washington hand press and his
laboratory, Editor Hyatt managed
to keep from getting highly explo-
sive gun cotton mixed up with the
local items and the legal notices,
and conducted exhaustive expert
ments. From this gun cotton (nitro-
cellulose) he failed to produce syn
thetic ivory, and of course he
missed out on the $4,000 prize.
But he did stumble upon something
of far vaster Importance to the hui
man race than all the ivory IN the
world-he found the formula for
celluloid.
Celluloid was the first CONNER
cially usable plastic; it opened the
pages of history to what we now
think of as ''the plastic age" They
make billiard balls, jewelry and a
few fancy doo-dads out of ivory, and
they still do. But today, through
the magic of modern chemistry,
more than 300, 900 articles in gener-
al use are manufactured by the men
who pioneered in plastics.
What Plastics Are.
The end is nowhere in sight; in
fact the plastics industry is still in
its swaddling clothes. But the eff
feet it will have upon society in
the days to come is not going with
out recognition. The national re-
sources committee, in its much-pub-
licized report to the President, rec
ommending social planning for the
development of new inventions and
young industries, named plastics
with television, airplanes, the me-
chanical cotton-picker and other in
novations, as one of the inventions
most likely to have profound effect
upon our society of the next fifteen
years. Yet you cannot find one per-
son in fifty who can tell you much
about how plastics are made, or one
person in ten who can even tell
you what they are.
Actually, plastic is anything
that can be nodded or pressed into
a desired shape. In industry the
term applies to wide range of
synthetic materials classified ac-
cording to their chemical nature and
the way they are made. The most
important classification in industry
and in our daily life-is phenolic
resin. The utility of this plastic
was accidentally discovered; in fact
fortunate accidents were largely re-
sponsible for "the plastic age"
Ten years after Editor Hyatt
stumbled upon celluloid, the mate
rial was in general use; 10000 high
ly diversified articles were made
from it, the most famed probably
being the old celluloid collar that
reached popularity in the days of
handlebar moustaches.
Catalin Was War Baby.
Next in the succession of plastic
accidents was the discovery made
by DR.. Leo Baekeland, Belgian
American scientist, forty years aft
er the Hyatt incident. Experiment
ing in his laboratory at Yonkers,
N. Y, DR.. Baekeland was searching
for a highly insulating material
much in demand by the electrical
industry. He inadvertently hit up
on the formula for cast phenolic
resin which was non-inf1ammable.
This was highly important. Any