(2 of 3)
To Baekeland and others aiming to find commercial opportunities in the nascent electrical industry, that gunk was a signpost pointing toward something great. The challenge for Baekeland and his rivals was to find some set of conditions--some slippery ratio of ingredients and heat and pressure--that would yield a more workable, shellac-like substance. Ideally it would be something that would dissolve in solvents to make insulating varnishes and yet be as moldable as rubber. Starting around 1904, Baekeland and an assistant began their search. Three years later, after filling laboratory books with page after page of failed experiments, Baekeland finally developed a material that he dubbed in his notebooks "Bakelite." The key turned out to be his "bakelizer," a heavy iron vessel that was part pressure cooker and part basement boiler. With it, he was able to control the formaldehyde-phenol reaction with more finesse than had anyone before him.
Initial heating of the phenol and formaldehyde (in the presence of an acid or base to get the reaction going) produced a shellac-like liquid good for coating surfaces like a varnish. Further heating turned the liquid into a pasty, gummier goo. And when Baekeland put this stuff into the bakelizer, he was rewarded with a hard, translucent, infinitely moldable substance. In a word: plastic.
He filed patent applications and soon began leaking word of his invention to other chemists. In 1909 Baekeland unveiled the world's first fully synthetic plastic at a meeting of the New York chapter of the American Chemical Society. Would-be customers discovered it could be fashioned into molded insulation, valve parts, pipe stems, billiard balls, knobs, buttons, knife handles and all manner of items.
It was 20th century alchemy. From something as vile as coal tar came a remarkably versatile substance. It wasn't the first plastic, however. Celluloid had been commercially available for decades as a substitute for tortoise-shell, horn, bone and other materials. But celluloid, which had developed a reputation as a cheap mimic of better traditional materials, was derived from chemically treated cotton and other cellulose-containing vegetable matter. Bakelite was lab-made through and through. It was 100% synthetic.
Baekeland founded the General Bakelite Corp. to both make and license the manufacture of Bakelite. Competitors soon marketed knockoffs--most notably Redmanol and Condensite, which Thomas Edison used in a failed attempt to dominate the nascent recording industry with "unbreakable" phonograph disks. The presence of inauthentic Bakelite out there led to an early 20th century version of the "Intel Inside" logo. Items made with the real thing carried a "tag of genuineness" bearing the Bakelite name. Following drawn-out patent wars, Baekeland negotiated a merger with his rivals that put him at the helm of a veritable Bakelite empire.
Bakelite became so visible in so many places that the company advertised it as "the material of a thousand uses." It became the stuff of everything from cigar holders and rosary beads to radio housings, distributor caps and telephone casings. A 1924 TIME cover story on Baekeland reported that those familiar with Bakelite's potential "claim that in a few years it will be embodied in every mechanical facility of modern civilization."