The invention and development of plastic bags

The invention and development of plastic bags

The "ancestor" of this amazing material is the richest cellulose in plants.

In 1845, a chemist living in Basel, northwest Switzerland, accidentally ran into concentrated sulfuric and nitric acid on the table when he was doing an experiment at home. After this fuss, he hung the apron over the stove to dry it, but it burst into flames and was instantly reduced to ashes. Cybertron returned to the lab with this "big discovery" and repeated "accidents." After many experiments, cybertan finally found the reason: the main component of the cloth apron was cellulose, which contacted with the mixture of concentrated nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid to produce cellulose nitrate lipid, which became the widely used nitrocellulose. Thayer discovered the plasticity of nitro fibers, and that what was produced from them was impervious to water. He made some beautiful rice bowls, cups, bottles and teapots with it with great interest. He admired his masterpieces so much that he wrote to his friend Faraday, a famous scientist. Unfortunately Faraday didn't notice until a photographer appeared. Photographer Alexander parks has many hobbies, photography is one of them. In the 19th century, people could not buy ready-made photographic film and chemicals as they do today. So every photographer must also be a chemist.

One of the materials used in the photography is "collodion", which is a "nitrocellulose" solution, a nitrocellulose solution in alcohol and ether. It was then used to glue photosensitive chemicals to glass to make an equivalent to photographic film today.

In the 1850s, parks looked at different ways to treat cotton wool. One day, he tried to mix collodion cotton with camphor. To his surprise, the mixture produced a flexible hard material. Parks called the substance "paraxin," which is the earliest form of plastic.

Parkes made all kinds of things out of parxins: combs, pens, buttons and jewelry prints. However, parks was not very commercially minded and lost money on his business ventures. In the 20th century, people began to explore new USES for plastics. Almost everything in a household can be made of some kind of plastic. It was left to other inventors to develop and profit from parks's work. John Wesley hyatt, a printer from New York, saw the opportunity in 1868, when a company that made billiards complained of a shortage of ivory. Hyatt improved the manufacturing process and gave "parksin" a new name -- "celluloid." He got a ready market from billiards manufacturers and soon made all kinds of products out of plastic.

Early plastics caught fire easily, limiting the range of products made with them. The first plastic to successfully withstand high temperatures was bechlet. Leo baekeland received the patent in 1909.

Bakelite was first synthesized in America in 1909 by baekeland. In the 1930s, nylon was introduced. It was called "a fiber made from coal, air, and water, thinner than spider silk, stronger than steel, and superior to silk." Their appearance laid the foundation for the invention and production of various plastics. Due to the development of petrochemical industry in the second world war, the raw material of plastics replaced coal with oil, and the plastic manufacturing industry also got rapid development.

Plastic is a very light material that can be softened by heating it at a very low temperature and made into any shape you want. Plastic products are brightly colored, light in weight, not afraid of falling and economical and durable. It not only brings a lot of convenience to people's life, but also greatly promotes the development of industry.