White out inventer9/19/2023 ![]() 54-86) frequently sent runners into the mountains for snow, which was then flavored with fruits and juices. During the Roman Empire, Nero Claudius Caesar (A.D. Biblical references also show that King Solomon was fond of iced drinks during harvesting. We know that Alexander the Great enjoyed snow and ice flavored with honey and nectar. This figure is increasing, and the majority of these bottles end up in our oceans, degrading into microplastics.Ice cream's origins are known to reach back as far as the second century B.C., although no specific date of origin nor inventor has been undisputably credited with its discovery. The economics of mass-produced, cheap plastic products have led to a single-use culture, and today around 500 billion PET bottles are sold every year. The PET polymer was developed specifically to contain pressurised carbonated drinks, though its popularity as a container for still beverages, above all water, has boomed in the 21st century. Many of our plastic problems began in the post-war period, when plastic began to replace the more expensive paper, glass and metal materials used in throwaway items, such as consumer packaging.Īmong the worst offenders, along with polyethylene shopping bags and polystyrene food containers, is the PET (polyethylene terephthalate, a form of polyester) drinks bottle.įirst patented in 1973 by American entrepreneur Nathaniel Wyeth, the PET bottle has many advantages over glass: lightweight for transport and safe in that it’s virtually unbreakable. ![]() The health implications of microplastic deposits in our bodies are not yet fully known. The degradation itself is an even bigger environmental issue, as the breaking down of plastics into microscopic particles pollutes our ocean, air and ecosystems. Image source for Plastic debris on a beach Now the world’s most abundant plastic, polyethylene was a wonder material: strong, flexible and heat-resistant. This was found to be a polymer of ethylene. Instead, due to a leak of oxygen into the vessel, they found a white waxy substance in a reaction tube. ![]() The following year, a team at ICI’s plant in Winnington were attempting to combine ethylene and benzaldehyde under great pressure and heat. One of the most abundant of these was ethylene gas, a by-product that the British company Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) beat its German and US competitors to make a plastic from.įormed in 1926, ICI had its first big plastic success with Perspex in 1932. These alliances were driven by the desire to make use of waste material from processing crude oil and natural gas. These companies are still the major producers of raw material resins for the plastics industry today. In the early decades of the 20th century, the petroleum and chemical industries began to form alliances in companies like Dow Chemicals, ExxonMobil, DuPont and BASF. Ironically, as movie stars made short hair popular in the 1920s, the celluloid comb industry was short-lived-until manufacturers switched to making a newly fashionable product: sunglasses. Undoubtedly, celluloid’s greatest cultural application was cinema film. This new plastic made items like combs and billiard balls affordable to many more people, democratising consumer goods and culture. Parkes himself didn’t enjoy commercial success-but his invention did, taken up and developed by others, including his former factory manager Daniel Spill and the businessman John Wesley Hyatt, the latter of whom founded the Celluloid Manufacturing Company in the US. Considered the first manufactured plastic, it was a cheap and colourful substitute for ivory or tortoiseshell. Its inventor, the Birmingham-born artisan-cum-chemist Alexander Parkes, patented this new material in 1862 as Parkesine. ![]() One of the earliest was cellulose nitrate-cotton fibres dissolved in nitric and sulphuric acids then mixed with vegetable oil. Inventors soon attempted to tackle this environmental and economic problem, with many patents for new semi-synthetic materials based on natural substances such as cork, blood and milk. The same fate awaited some species of turtle, whose shell was harnessed for combs. Elephants were facing extinction if demand for their ivory, used in items from piano keys to billiard balls, continued. ![]() By the middle of the 19th century, in the wake of industrialised goods production, some animal-derived materials had become increasingly scarce. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |