Plastics
Bakelite is the first material made entirely in a laboratory rather than found.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 28 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Leo Baekeland patents Bakelite in 1907, a thermosetting phenolic resin with no natural precursor — the first fully synthetic plastic. Nylon follows in 1935, polythene in 1933. Plastics are cheap, mouldable, durable and chemically inert, which is exactly why they accumulate: they do not readily break down, and the same property that makes them useful makes their disposal a problem that has not been solved.