les!
Industrial war is the inevitable result of a successful new material. When one considers that many industrial units formerly made of several pieces of metal bolted together can now be molded in one piece of plastic, thus saving the cost of assembly and painting, the answer is obvious.
Yet there are many uses which plastics cannot as yet fill, because of mechanical limitations. Will research remedy that by producing still newer materials that will make beautiful and inexpensive furniture, automobile bodiesâ€”even houses? Research is trying, that is certain; and seldom does it fail. Meanwhile, the art of fabricating plastics is advancing steadily. The new automatic injection method of molding, in which a plastic almost ready to harden is forced under pressure into the molds and can be ejected in a few seconds, a finished product, is a case in point. By this method, too, whole sets of buttons, typewriter keys and other similar objects can be molded at once, instead of laboriously one at a time.
There is no telling what may happen next in this lusty infant industry. Molders now produce plastics in sizes ranging from tiny, jewel-like earring adornments to nine-foot, 4,000-gallon water tanks. The Ford Motor Company uses oil pressed from soy beans in the enamel finishes for its cars; and Ford is now experimenting with a plastic made of the soy bean meal, after the oil has been removed, mixed with formaldehyde. It is an exciting technological race; and modern plasticsâ€”those already in use and those still bubbling in test tubesâ€”may well be the source of a new era of prosperity.
Paint, incidentally, gives a startling example of research’s ability to jolt industry into new channels. Twenty years ago automobiles hastened through the assembly line only to languish for five weeks in the finishing shop. Today, because of the high development of nitrocellulose lacquersâ€”made from plant fiberâ€”cars are finished from the bare metal to the final polish in one day! That development was a rude awakening to a sleeping paint industry, which was suddenly forced to scrap old equipment and hurriedly reorganize to meet new demands. Plastics have already caused a similar re-gearing of basic industries, and undoubtedly will cause more.
Cellulose, which exploded paint theories and makes excellent plastics, is a marvelously versatile substance. It goes into the manufacture of such widely separated things as raincoats, cements, substitutes for leather, and the film which makes the modern motion picture possible. Into Cellophane it goesâ€”and in a decade enough Cel-ophane has been manufactured to encircle the earth with a band 200 miles wide. It makes rayon, and a rayon cord as strong as structural steel of the same cross-section promises to double the life of automobile tires. Such things don’t just happen; they are brought about by ceaseless, untiring research.
The laboratory has changed rubber from a sticky, ungovernable substance into a tough and sturdy one; it has transformed the tire from a mental and physical hazard into something seldom given a thought. Yet in automobiles it is generally the rubber parts that require replacement first; chemical tougheners have worked wonders, but there is still room for improvement.
It may seem strange that the Dupont laboratories, largely instrumental in bringing rubber to its present dependability, should now be engaged in perfecting synthetic rubber. Artificial rubber has long been the ardent dream of many a chemist. Why aim for a substitute when the natural product is so cheap and so much improved? The answer is largely an economic one. America gets its rubber from abroad. During the past decade, through foreign manipulation, rubber’s price has gone as high as $1.29 a pound. Chemists saw that challenge. If they could do the impossibleâ€”produce synthetic rubber at a reasonable priceâ€”they could free the country from its dependence on foreign supply.
Research has done just that, using acetylene as a raw material. Dupont chemists, aided by the work of a Notre Dame professor, Father J. A. Nieuwland,