SECTIONS

• About Leo Baekeland & Bakelite

How the industry has changed

• Towns built around plastics

• Consumer attitudes

• Plastics as a replacement material

• Time line

• National Plastics Center

• The next 100 years

• Plastics in pop culture

• Photo gallery

• Viewpoint

• Perspective

A video interview with Palmer Humphrey

Crazy like a Fox ... at GE
 
At GE Plastics and many other companies, unrelated incidents often led to great achievements. For GE it came down to this: The impatience shown by Dan Fox as a graduate student in Oklahoma eventually led to his discovering Lexan polycarbonate.

Nylon works its magic for DuPont
 
Researchers at DuPont Co. just couldn't stop thinking about women's legs. This obsession peaked on May 15, 1940, when 5 million pairs of women's stockings made with DuPont's nylon resin were sold in a single day.

Dow turns styrene pileup into profit
 
Dow Chemical Co.'s rich plastics history depended on transforming a field of drums into a field of dreams. The firm´s fledgling polystyrene operation would go on to become one of Dow's largest and most profitable units.