The Historical Development of Plastics Materials

During the last century-and-a-half, rubber and plastics have been introduced that have not only challenged the older materials for their well-established uses, but have also made possible new products that have helped to extend the range of activities of mankind. Without these two groups of materials, it is difficult to conceive how such everyday features of modem life such as the motor car, the telephone, and the television set could ever have been developed. By 1900, the only plastics materials available were celluloid, gutta percha, ebonite, and shellac. Celluloid was the first plastics material obtained by chemical modification of a polymer to be exploited, the phenolics were the first commercially successful fully synthetic resins. The decade 1930-1940 saw the initial industrial development of four of today's major thermoplastics: polystyrene, poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), the polyolefins, and poly(methyl methacrylate). Since all these materials can be considered formally as derivatives of ethylene they have, in the past, been referred to as ethenoid plastics but, nowadays vinyl plastics is the term that is widely used. Furthermore, the chapter discusses that plastics have been widely accepted as packaging materials. Plastics bottles have been particularly appreciated in the bathroom, where breakage of glass containers has led to many serious accidents. The automotive industry is now a major user of plastics, with the weight of plastics being used per car increasing year-by-year. It has recently been stated that in the early 1990s the average car contained some 75 kg of plastics.